Cfje ^oetr^ of Htft 



i 

63 



B 
The Works of 

BLISS CARMAN 

The Kinship of Nature • • • • $ J.50 
The Friendship of Art • • • . X.50 
The Poetry of Life U50 

Poetrp 

Ode on the Coronation of King Edward «^^ J.OO 

Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics 

Limited Edition (500 copies) . . ne( 6.00 

Large Paper Edition (200 copies) . net JO. 00 

Autograph Edition (50 copies) . net 15,00 

PIPES OF PAN SERIES as foUows: 

L From the Book of Myths . . «^/ J 00 

2. From the Green Book of the Bards net J.OO 

3. Songs of the Sea Children . . nei UOO 

4. Songs from a Northern Garden ♦ net J. 00 

5. From the Book of Valentines . net J. 00 
Poems: A sumptuous collected edition of all 

of the author's verse complete with the excep- 
tion of Sappho. Limited to 300 copies. Two 
volumes, small folio, printed throughout in 
red and black on hand-made paper . net *J0 00 
*0n January 1st, 1906, this price will be advanced to > 15. 00 

L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 

New England Building, Boston, Mass* 




^ 
^ 



/XCc^y^^^/^i^^y'^<'<^:zc^ 



m 



/36 







I THE LIBRARY Oh , 
•: Two 0«Dies i-s^CalveJl 

I NOV I (905 ( 



Copyright, igos 
By L. C. Page & Company 

(incorporated) 
All rights reserved 



Published October, 1905 



COLONIAL PRESS 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds &* Co. 

Boston, U.S. A. 



To My Sponsors in California 

y. O'B, GunUy of San Francis co^ 

and 
W, Irving Way, of Los Angeles 

Will you not accept this volume, my good 
friends, in ever grateful remembrance of 
our happy days under your Californian sky? 

I recall now, with the continent between 
us, how gladly I met you on that morning of 
my arrival, as I strayed through the hall of 
the St. Francis, feeling like a mouse in a 
new loft, and how quickly I was made to feel 
at home. Of all the great-hearted hospital- 
ity of the Coast which had me in its generous 
keeping at San Francisco, at San Jose, at 
Monterey and Santa Barbara, at Pasadena 
and Los Angeles and Santa Monica, I can 

vii 



never adequately speak. If this were a mag- 
num opus, and there were enough of it to 
divide, I should have to put a score of names 
on my dedicatory page in order to indicate 
anything like my full indebtedness. As it 
is, perhaps those who do not find themselves 
spoken of by name, will be indulgent enough 
to receive this more tacit acknowledgment 
of their kindly favour and friendship, on the 
trail and in the town. 

You were always, if I may say it, so con- 
stant and painstaking in all the finest ofBces 
of comradeship, so ready and solicitous, that 
I verily believe if I should find myself sud- 
denly at the Great Portal, and my references 
required, I should instinctively answer, " I 
am a friend of Mr. Gunn's " — or Mr. 
Way's, whichever name happened to slip 
from my tongue at that embarrassing mo- 
ment. If I were so unfortunate as to have 
outlived either of you, and to come after you 
to the shining Doubtful Entrance, I should 
have no anxiety at all about my reception; 

viii 



for I would know that you had already se- 
cured me not only an admission, but prob- 
ably an introduction to the Management, and 
an invitation to supper with a few of the 
choice Stars. 

The book to be dedicated to you ought 
really to deal with the Art of Friendship; 
but since I am not likely ever to write such 
a work, let me have the genuine pleasure 
of offering you the first that comes to hand 
since we parted. Indeed, if ever the Art 
of Friendship should be written, — some 
golden book on that high theme worthy to 
stand beside Cicero and Emerson, — it 
would be a stalk without pith for me, unless 
its pages were redolent of your names and 
some memorable tribute to your fine instinct 
in the art. 

Now that I have finished the writing and 
am beginning the final revision as it goes to 
press, I have, as one always must have in 
such cases, quarter-hours, half-hours, whole 
hours and days of misgiving (or illumina- 

ix 



tion), when I sit aghast at the meagre result, 
in view of all that one knows might have 
been done. If I am to go through the ordeal 
of proof-reading with my sanity intact, and 
not qualify for the funny-house through fits 
of melancholy, I shall have to keep your 
kindly faith constantly in mind. I shall have 
to think to myself that while you are deli- 
cate and exacting critics, you are also the 
most indulgent of friends, and will be sure 
to find some value in the pages, even if you 
have to look for it between the lines. I shall 
be more than conscious of all the short- 
comings which must be evident in such a 
collection of essays on poetry as this, when 
compared with other books on the same sub- 
ject, by men whose names I hesitate even to 
recall. But you, I know, will make no such 
comparison. Your generosity will overcome 
your scholarship, and, with all your knowl- 
edge of good books, and your love of the 
best in letters, you will still be unable to find 
fault when you read herein. I can see you 

X 



2ro Ms Sponuovn 

turn from page to page and smile with only 
the kindliest appreciation; or when some 
sentence or paragraph is farther from the 
truth than the rest, I can hear you offer your 
suggestions in the gentlest words. 

You may not be critics of the sort that is 
best for one, very likely, but you are of the 
sort that one likes best. And if I could al- 
ways feel as I shall feel while revising this 
undeniable offspring, I should never need 
any severer criticism than yours, for I should 
never again attempt to write. 

I should never again be venturing forth 
from the safe old beaches of silence upon the 
splendid perilous alluring sea of English 
prose, where even to-day I can behold so 
many hardy young captains sailing without 
disaster their fairy shallops in the sun. They 
have all voyaged successfully to the Fortu- 
nate Islands, and are bringing their untold 
treasures safely into port, while we stand 
offering our timorous applause. Yet such 
is the infatuation of mortals, I dare say I 

xi 



a:o JUS Stioni^ori^ 

shall be launching a new skiff through the 
surf of criticism every year while life lasts, 
only to have it dashed in pieces about my 
feet, or to see it dance a few yards from land 
to sink beneath the waves. For, like the 
dauntless discoverers of old, I shall always be 
cheered by the unconquerable hope that one 
day perhaps I may construct a craft, all my 
own, yet not unseaworthy nor unshapely, 
which shall be fit to ride the breakers trium- 
phantly, and skim the deep blue waters in a 
breeze of popularity at last. 

However, the book is done now with all 
its blemishes, and must stand for awhile, — 
unless, indeed, as I give it this final reading, 
I could drop it sheet by sheet into the canon 
(as you would call our Kaaterskill Clove), 
there to be blown away with vanishing 
mists. That is but a mad hope I shall have 
to relinquish. Let me quiet my agitation with 
the thought that, while I shall have no reader 
more difficult than myself, I shall have two, 
at least, more certain to be pleased. 

xii 



Take the book, then, if you will, and read 
it not with the keenest glasses in the world. 
If it fails in temper or in grasp, and is 
swept into overstatement by some heat of 
conviction, or falls into banalities for lack 
of wisdom, read it only the more leniently 
and forgive it all its trespasses. With what- 
ever failings, it shall not be superfluous. I 
will save it from that final annihilation, at 
least. For if it is of no account as criticism, 
very well, let it serve for something far 
better, — an excuse for this dedication. 
That will be a sufficient justification for its 
appearance, — that it should become a votive 
offering in the Temple of Friendship and a 
token of affection between men. 

B. C. 

Twilight Park, September , ipOS* 



xni 



Contents 



-^ 








fAGB 


The Poetry of Life i 


The Purpose of Poetry 










. 15 


How to Judge Poetry 










. 52 


The Poet in the Commonwealth 










. 63 


The Poet in Modern Life . 










. 78 


The Defence of Poetry 










. 105 


Distaste for Poetry . 










1 1 1 


Longfellow 










127 


Emerson 










151 


Mr. Riley's Poetry . 










159 


Mr. Swinburne's Poetry . 










^11 


The Rewards of Poetry 










191 


Cheerful Pessimism . 










217 


Masters of the World 










224 


The Poetry of To-morrow 










237 


The Permanence of Poetry 










247 



€f^t ©oettg of Cife 



" The poetry of life," says the book of St. 
Kavin, '' is the poetry of beauty, sincerity, 
and elation." And when you think of it, 
it seems reasonable enough that this should 
be so, since these are the archangelic trio to 
whose keeping the very sources of life are 
confided. They are the dispensers of happi- 
ness, the bringers of wisdom, the guardians 
of mystery. 

That the poetry of life should of necessity 
be the poetry of beauty, first of all, seems 
nearly self-evident. The beauty of the world 
so outreaches and overcomes all its ugliness, 
is so much more prevalent and vital and per- 
sistent. One concludes at once and instinc- 
tively that life concerns itself with beauty 

I 



sue jpoettjj of mtt 

almost, at first glance, to the exclusion of 
everything else. What more natural, there- 
fore, since life cares so much for beauty, 
than that art, life's replica, should care 
greatly for it also? 

As for its sincerity, the poetry of life 
need not always be solemn, any more than 
life itself need always be sober. It may be 
gay, witty, humourous, satirical, disbeliev- 
ing, farcical, even broad and reckless, since 
life is all these, but it must never be insin- 
cere. Insincerity, which is not always one 
of the greatest sins in the moral universe, 
becomes in the world of art an offence of 
the first magnitude. Insincerity in life may 
be mean and despicable, and indicate a petty 
nature; but in art insincerity is death. A 
strong man may lie upon occasion, and make 
restitution and be forgiven, but for the artist 
who lies there is hardly any reparation pos- 
sible, and his forgiveness is much more diffi- 
cult. Art, being the embodiment of the 
artist's ideal, is truly the corporeal sub- 

2 



cue ^otivs of fLiU 

stance of his spiritual self; and that there 
should be any falsehood in it, any deliberate 
failure to represent him faithfully, is as 
monstrous and unnatural as it would be for 
a man to disavow his own flesh and bones. 
Here we are every one of us going through 
life committed and attached to our bodies; 
for all that we do we are held responsible; 
if we misbehave, the world will take it out 
of our hide. But here is our friend the 
artist committing his spiritual energy to his 
art, to an embodiment outside himself, and 
escaping down a by-path from all the conse- 
quences. What shall be said of him? The 
insincere artist is as much beyond the pale 
of human sympathy as the murderer. Mor- 
ally he is a felon. 

There is no excuse for him, either. There 
was no call for him to make a liar of him- 
self, other than the most sordid of reasons, — 
the little gain, the jingling reward of gold. 
For no man would ever be insincere in his 
art, except for pay, except to cater to some 

3 



2CtIf ^ottvs of atte 

other taste than his own, and to win approval 
and favour by his sycophancy. If he were 
assured of his competency in the world, and 
placed beyond the reach of necessitous want, 
how would it ever occur to him to create an 
insincere art? Art is so simple and spontane- 
ous, so dependent on the disingenuous emo- 
tion, that it can never be insincere, unless 
violence is done to all law of nature and of 
spirit. Since art arises from the sacramental 
blending of the inward spirit with the out- 
ward form, any touch of insincerity in it 
assumes the nature of a horrible crime, a 
pitiable revolt against the order and eternity 
of the universe. That the conditions of 
modern commercialism are to blame for this 
unhappy possibility, may be true; but that 
only makes it the more sad, and gives the 
final selfish touch that robs it of all sym- 
pathy. 

The environs of the city of art are always 
full of charlatans. The clever artisan or in- 
ventor who often does not even pretend to 

4 



8CJir ^ottvs of mu 

make the real article you seek, but offers you 
something " just as good and much cheaper/' 
is never far from the honest market-place. 
Often he has the very appearance and pose 
of the true artist, and his resentment of an 
imputation of his honesty would deceive 
many. He is a cheat, for all that, and in 
his heart he knows it. 

For the books that are written, the plays 
that are produced, the pictures that are 
painted by fatuous, misdirected, incompetent, 
yet sincere energy, one can have nothing but 
compassionate respect. The sight of some 
poor spirit, in guileless devoted zeal, spend- 
ing years and health and hope and resources 
in the pursuit of some quite hopeless ambi- 
tion in art, is a thing to make one weep. 
So pure, so kindly, so praiseworthy in its 
intentions, and yet so futile! For such as 
these there must be a special reward here- 
after. They do not cumber the ground, they 
keep it sweet; often they shame even the 



^iit J&ottvp of aife 

great ones by their singleness of purpose and 
sincerity of soul. 

It is not necessary, as I say, for art to 
be solemn and wholly serious-minded in 
order to be sincere. Comedy is quite sincere. 
She is one of the most honest of the muses. 
Yet it is easy to usurp her name and play the 
fool for pennies, with never a ray of appre- 
ciation of her true character. I know a 
comic poet (you may not believe me, but I 
believe myself), a young man who has 
recently arisen, who seems to me to be a 
true artist and no pretender. Whenever I 
see his name I read his jingles with delight. 
Such amazing productivity with such un- 
failing irresistible mirth I have seldom heard 
of elsewhere. If he is not another Hood, 
I am mistaken. He is, so far at least, a 
proof of the fact that one can live in the 
world yet not be destroyed by the world; 
for though so eminently popular, he is 
still genuine in his wit. I always think of 
his work as an example of art which may 



I 



2Ciie jpontfi of atfe 

be perfectly frivolous and perfectly sincere 
at the same time. And every day, side by 
side v^ith his, I see other w^ork masking as 
comedy, which is nothing but false, unin- 
spired, and wooden, the pitiable product of 
cleverness without spirit, the worthless con- 
trivance of journeymen. There seem to be 
plenty of fabricators of this latter sort of 
rhyme. They are, I suppose, — they and 
their works, — the inevitable but odious ac- 
companiments of our times. They write to 
please their editors, and their reward is sure, 
but the comic muse disowns them for all 
that. 

Sincerity, then, is not in the least averse 
to fun, it only requires that the fun shall be 
genuine and come from the heart, as it re- 
quires that every note of whatever sort shall 
be genuine and spring from the real person- 
ality of the writer. 

More than this, I find in the phrase, " the 
poetry of sincerity," a suggestion as to the 
function of poetry in relation to science, to 

7 



Efit iPoettjj of ILffe 

truth, for our thirst for knowing what is to 
be known. And the aspiration, Da mihi, 
Domine, scire quod sciendum est, seems 
preeminently the daily prayer for a poet 
to make, the voice of his longing to be 
brought into communication with things as 
they are. It points to the necessity poetry is 
always under of supplying food for our 
curiosity, answers for our deepest questions, 
and a reasonable explanation of life. It 
emphasizes the fact which I have reiterated 
so often, that it is never enough for poetry 
to be stirring and entrancing, unless it is 
illuminating as well. The poetry of sin- 
cerity is the poetry of truth. 

In the matter of elation as a requirement 
in the poetry of life, perhaps a little more 
explanation is needed. As I understand it, 
*' the poetry of life is the poetry of beauty, 
sincerity, and elation," because the poetry 
of ugliness, falsehood, and depression would 
be a poetry of death. And that is something 
the world does not want. It has enough of 

g 



death in reality, without any artificial copy 
or reminder of it. When poetry, poetry that 
is highly esteemed and widely valued, refers 
to death, it seeks and celebrates some trace 
of survival, some hint of immortality. It 
strives to minimize the depressing aspect 
of death, and bring gladness out of sorrow. 
There has recently been issued a selection 
from Whitman's poetry, entitled " The Book 
of Heavenly Death." It is anything but 
depressing, of course. It has its place as- 
sured with the poetry of elation. And so 
of all great sincere poetry which has proved 
itself of value in men's eyes, it retains its 
vogue and influence because of its enhearten- 
ing power, its power to strengthen our hearts 
in courage, faith, love, gladness, serenity, 
wisdom, resignation, or peace. Poetry which 
emphasizes depression, discouragement, and 
defeat, and harps upon the horrors or ills 
or dark enigmas of life, is of no earthly 
use whatever to men whose whole business 



2r)|e ^ottvs of ILltt 

in life is to avoid and mitigate and overcome 
those sorry evils. 

I have heard a writer who insisted, in 
season and out of season, perhaps, on the 
necessity of the joyous note in art, taken 
to task as a pagan, and accused of being 
indifferent to the sorrows of man, or even 
ignorant of them. I am sure that by the 
word " joy " he could not have meant any 
mere momentary and shallow gladness, 
whether of the senses or the spirit. To re- 
joice, is the injunction repeated again and 
again by an apostle of Christianity, the 
religion of the sorrowful. The man who 
has not tasted sorrow, — natural, inevitable, 
purifying sorrow, — does not know what 
joy means in this larger sense. There is a 
higher joy which includes all sorrow, just 
as there is a higher good which forgives all 
evil, though it may scarcely be within the 
reach of mortals. And one who should 
advocate the cultivation of a small, thought- 
less, selfish joy, to the exclusion of all ex- 

lO 



srtie ^oetrs of Hife 

perience of sorrow and all sympathy with 
pain, would be foolish indeed. For such 
joy is less than the joy of children, being 
heartless and insecure. 

If one asks for the note of joy in art, and 
demands that the quality of gladness be 
emphasized, this does not imply that sorrow 
is to be ignored. A joy without sympathy 
would be unnatural, if, indeed, it were 
possible in such a life as this. And if we 
are urged to rejoice and be exceeding glad, 
let us understand that it is to be in spite of 
sorrow and evil, even somehow by their 
means, and not regardless of their presence 
in life. 

That is always good in poetry, as in life, 
which stimulates the spirit and renews its 
zest, its strength, its fortitude. Sorrow and 
the representation of sorrow may do this at 
times as well as happiness. There is an 
influence in tragedy, a nobleness of grief, 
which is tonic to the soul, and leaves us 
sobered but not dejected. It is the squalid 

II 



SCJie ^ottvs of Hift 

and unrelieved depression in them, which 
makes so many modern tragedies hopeless 
failures. They emphasize the ugly evil, yet 
afford the soul no escape, offer it no com- 
pensation, such as there always is in life. 
No wonder the public will have none of 
them. But in classic tragedy there is always 
some exit for the distraught, indomitable 
spirit, some incentive to endurance, some 
consciousness of greatness or nobility. We 
weep at the sorrows of Lear, yet our pride 
is touched by the grandeur of that old kingly 
man, and our just indignation at the im- 
pious daughters relieves the tension of suf- 
fering. Both sentiments are kindling to the 
spirit, and we come away from the play 
bettered, if not cheered. It belongs to the 
poetry of elation, tragedy though it is. 

Such poetry is in accord with the trend 
of life, — life which is full of evil and 
horror and confusion and mischance, and 
which yet goes on its long, slow, persistent 
course, ever putting aside these monstrous 

12 



drawbacks, and gathering to itself all love- 
liness and truth and charity. Anything 
which can help the spirit of man on his 
difficult trail, that will he gladly make use 
of, that only to him is good. In poetry, in 
the arts, whatever gives us a touch of elation, 
of glad encouragement, of hope, of aspira- 
tion, of solace, that do we eagerly seize and 
hold. It seems to us good, as well as fair and 
true. If you say that the poetry of sincerity 
is the poetry of truth, you may add, the 
poetry of elation is the poetry of goodness. 

To incorporate truth, to arrest and make 
evident those facts about nature which de- 
light and satisfy the mind; to incorporate 
at the same time the feelings which delight 
and satisfy the heart; and to give this mani- 
festation a guise which shall allure and 
delight and satisfy the senses; this is the 
great and only business of all art, just as 
it appears to be the supreme concern of all 
life. 

Life which is constantly realizing itself 
13 



2f1^e ^ottvs of ILIU 

in nature, does so in these three ways, and 
offers us these three phases of itself. An 
art which attempts to realize itself, while 
still neglecting to make itself felt in any one 
of these three directions, must, therefore, be 
faulty just to that extent. And since art is 
a mimic creation, made in imitation of life, 
we see how this saying was come by, " The 
poetry of life is the poetry of beauty, sin- 
cerity, and elation." 



14 



€J)e ilurpose erf ©oettg 



Before considering any of the aims and 
purposes of poetry, or any of its essential 
characteristics, we had better first consider 
it in its place as one of the fine arts. If we 
then ask ourselves what the fine arts are to 
do for us, what place they are to hold in a 
civilized nation, we shall perhaps be able to 
look at poetry in a broader way than we 
otherwise could; we shall be able to think 
of it not merely as a pleasant and amusing 
diversion, but as one of the potent factors 
of history. 

If we try to find a place for the fine arts 
among our various human activities, we 
might begin by making a rough classifica- 
tion of our subject. The most primitive and 

15 



necessary occupations we engage in, such as 
fishing and agriculture, trading, navigating, 
and hunting, we call industries. These mark 
the earliest stage of man's career in civiliza- 
tion. Then he comes to other occupations, 
requiring more skill and ingenuity; he 
weaves fabrics, he makes himself houses, he 
fashions all sorts of implements for the house- 
hold and the chase. He becomes a builder, 
a potter, a metal-worker, an inventor. He 
has added thought to work and made the 
work easier. And these new occupations 
which he has discovered for himself differ 
from his earlier ones chiefly in this, that they 
result in numerous objects of more or less 
permanence, cunningly contrived and aptly 
fitted to use. They are objects of useful 
or industrial art. 

Now we must note two things about this 
step forward which man has taken toward 
civilization; in the first place he had to have 
some leisure to do these things, and in the 
second place the objects he has made reveal 

i6 



his ingenuity and forethought. They are 
records of his life; and it will happen that 
as his leisure increases, his implements will 
become more and more elaborate and ornate. 
Every workman will have his own way of 
fashioning them, using his own device and 
designs, so that they will become something 
more than rude relics of one historic age 
or another; they will tell us something of 
the artificer himself; they will embody some 
intentional expression of human life and 
come to have an art value. In so far as they 
can do this, they contain the essential quality 
of the fine arts. And the more freely the 
workman can deal with his craft, the more 
perfectly he can make it characteristic of 
himself, the finer will its artistic quality 
become. 

The only purpose of the primitive indus- 
tries was a utilitarian one. The prime object 
of the industrial arts is also a utilitarian one; 
but they have a secondary object as well, 
they aim at beauty, too. They not only 

17 



8Cfie ^ottvs of affe 

serve the practical end for which they were 
intended, they serve also as a means of ex- 
pression for the workman. Now just as 
we passed from the industries to the industrial 
arts, by the addition of this secondary inter- 
est, this human artistic expressional quality, 
so by making this quality paramount we 
may pass from the industrial arts to the fine 
arts themselves, where expression is all-im- 
portant, and utility becomes less prominent. 
It is the distinguishing mark of the fine arts 
that they give us a means of expressing our- 
selves in terms of intelligible beauty. 

I have made this distinction between the 
fine and the industrial arts merely for the 
sake of clarifying our ideas, and getting a 
notion of what is the essence of all art. But 
really the difference is not important, and, 
having served its turn, may be forgotten. 
There is an element of art, of course, in 
everything that we do; the manner of the 
doing constitutes the art. The quality of art 
which we should appreciate and respect may 

i8 



quite as truly be present in a Japanese to- 
bacco-box as in a Greek tragedy. The Japa- 
nese, indeed, offer an instance of a people 
who have raised the handicrafts quite to the 
level of the fine arts. All those fascinating 
objects of beauty, which they contrive with 
so much skill, are often, one may guess, only 
as many excuses for the workman to exhibit 
his deftness and his taste. This black oak 
cabinet inlaid with pearl, or that lacquer 
bowl, may, perhaps, be counted useful ob- 
jects; but I fancy that before all else they 
were just so many opportunities for the ar- 
tist; and when he fashioned them he had 
in mind chiefly the creation of something 
beautiful, and dwelt very little upon the use 
to which they might be put. He was bent 
on giving play to his imagination, and you 
may be very sure that he was glad in the 
work of his hands, and wrought all those 
intricate effects with loving care. Surely the 
result is much more deserving of respect than 
a mediocre epic or a second-rate painting. 

19 



8Cfie ^ottvs of mu 

It is not what we do that counts, but how 
well we do it. There is no saying one kind 
of work is art, and another kind is not art. 
Anything that is well done is art; anything 
that is badly done is rotten. 

I do not wish either to confine the word 
" useful," in its application, to our material 
needs. Everything we do ought to be use- 
ful, and so it is, if it is done well. Tables 
and chairs are useful; but so are pictures 
and cathedrals and lyrics and the theatre. 
If we allow ourselves only what are called 
the necessities of life, we are only keeping 
alive one-third of being; the other two- 
thirds of our manhood may be starving to 
death. The mind and the soul have their 
necessities as well as the body. And we are 
to seek these things, not only for our future 
salvation, but for our salvation here and now, 
that our lives may be helpful and sound and 
happy. 

It is often easy to see how a fine art may 
grow from some more necessary and com- 

20 



monplace undertaking. The fine art of 
painting, for instance, arose, of course, from 
the use of ornamental lines and figures, 
drawn on pottery, or on the walls of a skin 
tent, where it served only to enhance the 
value of the craftsman's work and please 
his fancy. Gradually, through stages of 
mural decoration, perhaps, where ever in- 
creasing freedom of execution was given the 
artist, its first ornamental purpose was for- 
gotten, and it came to serve only as a means 
of expressing the artist's imaginative ideals. 
So, too, of sculpture and architecture, of 
dancing and acting. It is an easy transition 
from the light-hearted, superfluous skip of 
a child as it runs, to the more formal dance- 
step, as the child keeps time to music and 
gives vent to its gaiety of spirit. It is an 
easy transition from gesture and sign lan- 
guage, employed as a necessary means of 
communication, to their more elaborate use 
in the art of acting, where they serve merely 
to emphasize subtle expression and to create 

21 



an illusion. Similarly, too, whenever a piece 
of information is conveyed by word of 
mouth, and the teller of the tale elaborates 
it with zest and interest and grace, making 
it more memorable and vivid and beautiful, 
the fine art of letters is born. 

Now we may notice that the quality of 
art begins to appear in all our occupations, 
as the direst stress of existence is relieved, 
and man's spirit begins to have free play. 
Art is an indication of health and happy ex- 
uberance of life; it is as instinctive and 
spontaneous in its origin as child's play. To 
produce it naturally the artist must be free, 
for the time being, at least, — free from all 
doubt or hesitation about the truth, free 
from all material tortures, free from dejec- 
tion and fear. The primitive industries 
mark the first grade in the human story, when 
we were barely escaping from the necessity 
for unremitting hand-to-hand physical strug- 
gle for life; and the second grade in our 
progress is marked by the appearance of the 

22 



industrial arts; while we may look on the 
fine arts as an index of the highest develop- 
ment, as we pass from savagery and barbar- 
ism to civilization. And perhaps we shall 
not go very far astray, in our comparative 
estimate of nations, and their greatness on 
the earth, if we rank them in the order of 
their proficiency in the arts. 

Now the fine arts, having thus had their 
rise in the free play of the human spirit as 
it went about its work in the world, and 
busied itself with the concerns of life, became 
a natural vehicle for giving expression to all 
men's aspirations and thoughts about life. 
Indeed, it was this very simple elemental 
need for self-expression, as a trait in human 
character, which helped to determine what 
the fine arts should be. To communicate our 
feelings, to transmit knowledge, to amuse 
ourselves by creating a mimic world with 
imaginative shapes of beauty, these were 
fundamental cravings, lurking deep in the 
spirit of man, and demanding satisfaction 

23 



STfie ^oettff of afft 

almost as imperiously as the desires of the 
body. If hunger and cold made us indus- 
trious, no less certainly did love of com- 
panionship and need for self-expression 
mould our breath into articulate speech. 
Since, therefore, the fine arts are so truly a 
creation of man, we may expect to find in 
them a trustworthy image of himself. What- 
ever is human must be there, — all our 
thoughts, all our emotions, all our sensations, 
hopes, and fears. They will reveal and em- 
body in themselves all the traits of our 
complex nature. Art is that lovely corporeal 
body with which man endows the spirit of 
goodness and the thought of truth. For there 
are in man these three great principles: a 
capacity for finding out the truth and dis- 
tinguishing it from error, a capacity for 
perceiving goodness and knowing it from 
evil, and a capacity for discriminating be- 
tween what is ugly and what is fair. By 
virtue of the first of these powers, man seek- 
ing knowledge has become the philosopher 

24 



and scientist; by virtue of the second, he has 
evolved religions and laws, and social order 
and advancement; while by virtue of the 
third he has become an artist. Yet we must 
be careful not to suppose that either one of 
these powers ever comes alone into full play 
or fruition; for man has not three separate 
natures, but one nature with three different 
phases. When, therefore, man finds expres- 
sion for his complete personality in the fine 
arts, you may always expect to find there, 
not only creations of beauty, but monuments 
of wisdom and religion as well. Art can no 
more exist without having a moral bearing, 
than a body can exist without a soul. Its 
influence may be for good or for bad, but 
it is inevitable and it is unmistakable. In 
the same way no art can exist without an 
underlying philosophy, any more than man 
can exist without a mind. The philosophy 
may be trivial or profound, but it is always 
present and appreciable. 

Art, you see, is enlisted beyond escape, both 
25 



2CDe J^otttff of affe 

in the service of science and in the service 
of religion. Great art appears wherever the 
heart of man has been able to manifest it- 
self in a perfectly beautiful guise, informed 
by thoughts of radiant truth, and inspired 
by emotions of limitless goodness. Any 
piece of art which does not fulfil its obliga- 
tions to truth and goodness, as well as to 
beauty, is necessarily faulty and incomplete. 
At first thought perhaps you might not be 
quite ready to admit such a canon of criti- 
cism as this; for truth is the object of all 
science, and goodness is the object of all 
morality, and some persons have been accus- 
tomed to say that art has nothing whatever 
to do either with morality or science, but 
exists for its own sake alone, for the increase 
and perpetuation of pleasure. But art can- 
not give us complete pleasure if it only 
appeals to our senses, and leaves unsatisfied 
our natural curiosity and wonder, — our need 
for understanding and our need for loving. 
That is to say, our reason and our emotion 



must always be appealed to, as well as our 
sense of beauty. 

For instance, I may be entranced by the 
beautiful diction and cadence of a poem, 
whose conception of life and the universe 
may be patently false and puerile; from 
which point of view it could not please me at 
all, but must disgust me. Or, showing a just 
estimate of life, it might be true to philoso- 
phy and science, and yet celebrate some 
mean or base or ignoble or cruel incident in 
a way that would be revolting to my spirit. 
While it satisfied my sense of lyric beauty, 
it might fail utterly to satisfy my sense of 
right or my desire for truth. To be worth 
while, the fine arts must satisfy the mind 
with its insatiable curiosity, and the soul 
with its love of justice, quite as thoroughly 
as they slake the needs of the senses. 

To my mind the great preeminence of 
Browning as a poet does not rest on any 
profound philosophy to be found in his work, 
nor in his superior craftsmanship, nor yet 

27 



in his generous uplifting impulse and the 
way with which he arouses our feelings, but 
rather on the fact that he possessed all these 
three requirements of a poet in an equally 
marked degree. The work of Poe or of 
William Morris, on the other hand, does 
not exhibit this fine balance of strength, 
intellectuality, and passion. On its sensuous 
side, it is wonderfully beautiful; and yet it 
is not wholly satisfying, since it fails to give 
us enough to think about. Its mentality is 
too slight. Neither of these poets, to judge 
from their poetry alone, had any large and 
firm grasp of the thought of the world, such 
as Browning possessed, and that is why the 
wizardry of Poe and the luring charm of 
Morris are not more effective. An artist 
must be also a thinker and a prophet, if his 
creations are to have the breath of life. And 
again poetry may easily fail by being over- 
laden with this same requisite of mentality. 
It may have more thought than it can carry. 
Browning himself, in several of his later 

28 



STiie ^uvpont of poett^ 

books, like the '^ Inn Album," quite loses 
the poetic poise of his powers, and almost 
ceases to be a poet in his desire to be a 
philosopher. 

All this is so fundamentally important that 
we cannot have it too clearly in mind. It 
is the one great central truth, which must 
illumine all criticism, and help our under- 
standing of life, as well as of art. 

When we say, however, that it is the busi- 
ness of art to give pleasure in all three of 
these possible ways, of course we must not 
suppose that the arts do not differ one from 
another in their ability to meet such demand. 
The art of music cannot satisfy my reason as 
completely as the art of poetry, for example, 
because it cannot transmit a logical statement 
of fact. It may please my senses more 
readily than poetry can; it may arouse my 
emotions profoundly; but it cannot appeal 
to my mind in the way that poetry does. 
On the other hand, poetry itself is less 
strictly rational than prose literature; it 

29 



©tie J^oetrs of aift 

does not attempt to satisfy our curiosity as 
completely as prose does, though it pleases 
the aesthetic sense more. There need be no 
question of one art being greater or less 
than another; a sense of art equality is born 
of recognizing the interesting ways in which 
they vary, and of realizing that each has only 
a different proportion and arrangement of 
the three requirements which are necessary 
to them all. 

To speak quite simply, then, art is con- 
cerned first of all in the creation of beauty. 
At the same time it is closely related to 
science on one side and religion on the other. 
But how? I suppose we may say (to speak 
again quite roughly) that science is all we 
know about things, and religion is all we 
feel about them. Naturally, therefore, 
every artistic conception to which we give 
expression will betray something both of 
our philosophy and of our morality. It can- 
not be otherwise. In the case of literature 
the human spirit is finding expression for 

30 



2rti( Ji^uvpont of Jl^ottvp 

itself through the medium of human speech; 
and speech is the most exact means we have 
for conveying definite thought and narrating 
facts. So that every literature contains a 
great body of work which is almost pure 
science. In De Quincey's useful phrase, 
" There is a literature of knowledge and a 
literature of power." Euclid's Geometry, 
Newton's " Principia," Darwin's " Origin 
of Species," are works of science rather than 
of letters. They appeal solely to our reason, 
and do not attempt to please our sense of 
the beautiful by their literary structure and 
the arrangement of verbal sounds, nor to 
work upon our emotions in any way. Euclid 
does not care whether you like his forty- 
eighth proposition or not, so long as he can 
convince you that it is true. Neither does 
Darwin care whether his theory pleases you 
or not. He is only interested in getting at 
the truth. How that truth may affect our 
feelings is quite another matter. It is so, 
too, of theological and philosophic writers, 

31 



cue mttvs of atfe 

like Spinoza and Kant; they are primarily 
scientists and not artists. But when you pass 
from these austere reasoners to a work like 
Plato's Dialogues, you perceive that two 
new elements have entered into the making of 
a book. Plato is not only interested in find- 
ing out the truth, and convincing you of its 
reasonableness; he wishes at the same time 
to make the truth seem pleasant and good; 
he tries to enlist your feelings on his side, 
and also to satisfy your sense of beauty with 
his form of words. He has added a religious 
value and an art value to the theme of pure 
philosophy. He has made his book a piece of 
literature. 

And as literature is related to science on 
one hand, it is related to religion on the 
other. A book of meditation or of hymns 
may be extremely devout in sentiment, with- 
out possessing any value as literature. Be- 
cause, very often it takes a certain set of ideas 
for granted, without caring very much 
whether they are the largest and truest ideas 

32 



or not; and also because it makes no effort 
to be fine and distinguished in its diction. 
It may be entirely worthy in the fervour of 
its sentiment, and yet be quite unworthy in 
an artistic way. With great religious books 
this is not so. Works like the Psalms, or 
passages of Isaiah, or the poetry of Job, or 
Tennyson's " Crossing the Bar,'' are, first of 
all, religious in their intention; they are 
meant to play upon our emotional nature; 
but they do not stop there; they are cast in a 
form of words so perfect and fresh that it 
arrests us at once, and satisfies our love of 
beauty. At the same time they accord with 
the most profound and fundamental ideas 
about life and nature that humanity has been 
capable of. They satisfy our mind and our 
aesthetic sense, as well as our spiritual need. 
It is because of this threefold completeness, 
that we class them as pieces of literature, and 
not merely as records of religious enthusiasm. 
Depth of religious feeling alone would not 
have been sufficient to make them literature, 

33 



STije ^ottvs of mu 

any more than clear thinking and accu- 
rate reason alone could have made Plato's 
book a piece of literature. 

We must remember, too, how vapid the 
artistic quality is, when it exists by itself 
without adequate intelligence and underlying 
purpose. Think how much of modern art is 
characterized by nothing but form, how 
devoid it is of ideas, how lacking in anything 
like passionate enthusiasm. I believe this 
is due to some extent to our failure to realize 
that the three components of which I have 
been speaking are absolutely requisite in all 
art. We forget that there is laid upon art 
any obligation except to be beautiful; we 
forget that it must embody the truest thought 
man has been able to reach, and enshrine 
the noblest impulses he has entertained. 
This is not so much a duty for art to under- 
take as an inescapable destiny and natural 
function. 

It is a sad day for a people when their art 
becomes divorced from the current of their 

34 



life, when it comes to be looked on as some- 
thing precious but unimportant, having noth- 
ing at all to do with their social structure, 
their education, their political ideals, their 
faith, or their daily vocations. But I fear 
that we ourselves are living in just such a 
time. Fine arts may be patronized even 
liberally, but you could not say that they 
have any hold on us as a people; we have 
no wide feeling for them, no profound con- 
viction of their importance. 

There may be many reasons for this, and 
it is a question with which we are not directly 
concerned here. One reason there is, how- 
ever, it seems to me, which is too important 
not to be referred to. The fine arts are an 
outgrowth and finer development of the 
industrial arts. One would expect them to 
flourish only in a nation where the industrial 
arts flourish; only in such a nation would 
the great body of the people be infused with 
the popular love of beauty, and the feeling 
for art, which could create a stimulating, 

35 



©tie ^ottvs ot mu 

artistic atmosphere in which great artists 
could be born and nourished. So much will 
be readily admitted. Now, under modern 
industrial and commercial conditions, the in- 
dustrial arts are dead; they have been 
killed by the exigencies of our business pro- 
cesses. The industrial artist has become 
the factory hand. To produce anything 
worth while, either in the fine or the indus- 
trial arts, it is necessary that the worker 
should not be hurried, and should have some 
freedom to do his work in his own way, 
according to his own fancy and enjoyment. 
The modern workman, on the contrary, is a 
slave to his conditions; he can only earn 
his bread by working with a maximum of 
speed and a minimum of conscientiousness. 
He can have neither pleasure nor pride in his 
work; and consequently that work can have 
no artistic value whatever. The result is, 
that not only have we almost no industrial 
arts, properly speaking, but the modern 
workman is losing all natural taste and love 

36 



of beauty through being denied all exercise 
of that faculty. If you allow me to learn the 
art of a book-binder, or a potter, or a rug- 
maker, and to follow it for myself as best 
I can, my perception and love of what is 
beautiful will grow with my growing skill. 
But if you put me to work in a modern fac- 
tory, where such things, or rather where 
hideous imitations of those things, are pro- 
duced, I should not be able to exercise my 
creative talent at all, and whatever love of 
beauty I may have had will perish for lack 
of use. Thus it happens that the average 
man to-day has so little appreciation of 
beauty, so little instinctive taste, and art and 
letters occupy so small a place in our regard. 
Before we can reinstate them in that position 
of honour which they have always held, 
hitherto, among civilized nations, we shall 
have to find some solution for our industrial 
difficulties. 

It may seem, at a superficial glance, that 
the arts are all very well as a pastime, for 

37 



8Cfit J^oettff of Hift 

the enjoyment of the few, but can have no 
imperative call for busy men and women 
in active modern life. And if we should be 
told that, as a nation, we have no wide-spread 
love of beauty, no popular taste in artistic 
matters, we would not take the accusation 
very much to heart. We should probably 
admit it, and turn with pride to point to our 
wonderful material success, our achievements 
in the realm of trade and commerce, our un- 
matched prosperity and wealth. But that 
answer will not serve. You may lead me 
through the streets of our great cities, and 
fill my ears with stories of our uncounted 
millions of money, our unrivalled advance 
among the nations, but that will not divert 
my soul from horror at a state of society 
where municipal government is a venial 
farce, where there is little reverence for 
law, where mammon is a real God, and 
where every week there are instances of mob 
violence, as revolting as any that ever stained 
the history of the emperors of degenerate 

38 



Rome. We may brag our loudest to each 
other and even to ourselves, but the soul is 
not deceived. She sits at the centre of being, 
judging honestly and severely our violences, 
our folly, and our crime. And when at last 
v^e come to our senses, and perceive to what 
a condition of shame we have fallen from 
our high estate as a freedom-loving people, 
we may be able to restore some of those 
ideals which we have sacrificed, — ideals of 
common honesty, of civic liberty, of simple 
unostentatious dignity, of social order, law, 
and security. 

All this, of course, goes almost without 
saying. But the point I wish to make is, 
that this decay in moral standards goes hand 
in hand with our loss of taste. Our sense 
of beauty and our sense of goodness are so 
closely related that any injury to the one 
means an injury to the other. You cannot 
expect the nation which cares nothing at 
all for art to care very much for justice or 
righteousness. You cannot expect a man 

39 



who docs not care how hideous his surround- 
ings are to care very fastidiously about his 
moral obligations. And we shall never reach 
that national position of true greatness, which 
many Americans have dreamed of; we shall 
lose entirely those personal traits of dignity, 
honour, and kindliness, which many old- 
fashioned Americans still retain, unless we 
recognize the vital need of moral standards 
and aesthetic ideals working together hand in 
hand, and set ourselves to secure them. 

And if you ask me why America is pro- 
ducing for the most part only that which is 
mediocre in art and literature, I am forced 
to reply, that it is because the average man 
among us has so little respect for moral 
ideals. In a restless age we may experiment 
with all kinds of reform, but no permanent 
scheme of social betterment can dispense with 
personal obligation and integrity. It all 
comes back to the man at last. We don't 
need socialism, or imperialism, or free trade, 
or public ownership of monopolies, or state 

40 



control of trusts, so much as we need honest 
men, — men in public life and private enter- 
prise who have some standard of conduct 
higher than insatiable self-interest. 

Such ideals of conduct, in the widest sense, 
it is the aim of art to supply, and education 
to inculcate. And education, like art, has 
its three-fold object. It has to set itself not 
only to train our minds in a desire for the 
truth, but at the same time to train our spirit 
to love only what is good, and our bodies to 
take pleasure only in what is beautiful and 
wholesome; and the work of education, like 
that of art, must, while proceeding in any one 
of these directions, be intimately related with 
the workings of the other two. Emerson's 
wise phrase is profoundly applicable here: 

" All are needed by each one. 
Nothing is fair or good alone.** 

An education or an art which does not 
quicken the conscience, and stimulate and 
refine all our senses and instincts, along with 

41 



8Cfje J^ortts of Hift 

the growing reason, must still remain a 
faulty process at best. 

Let me ask all who are engaged in the 
great occupation of teaching, and in the de- 
lightful art of writing, to consider whether 
this is not so. I am sure we cannot lay too 
much stress on this philosophic conception 
of man in the three aspects of his nature. I 
believe it is a helpful solvent of many diffi- 
culties in education, in art, in life, in social 
and political aims. I believe that without 
it all of our endeavours for advancement in 
civilization will be sadly hampered and 
retarded, if not frustrated altogether, for the 
simple reason that art and civilization and 
social order exist for man; and they must, 
therefore, be adapted to the three differing 
phases of his requirement. While his intel- 
lectual needs and capacities must be trained 
and provided for; his great emotional and 
spiritual need and powers must be no less 
adequately recognized and exercised, and 



42 



his sensitive physical instincts wisely guided 
and developed. 

With this notion in mind, we may turn for 
a few minutes to consider what tasks litera- 
ture must set itself, and what it may be 
expected to do for a people. In the first 
place, it is the business of literature, as of 
all the arts, to create an illusion, — to pro- 
ject upon the imagination a mimic world, 
true to life, as we say, and at the same time 
more goodly and fair than the actual one 
we know. For unless the world of art be 
in some way more delightful than the world 
of our every-day experience, why should we 
ever visit it? We turn for sympathy to art, 
for recreation and refreshment, for solace 
and inspiration. We ask to find in it, ready 
to hand, these helpful and pleasant qualities 
which are so hard to find in real life. And 
the art which does not give them to us is 
disappointing, however clever it may be. 
It is this necessity for being beautiful, this 
necessity for providing an immediate pleas- 

43 



STije portrs of ULift 

ure, that makes pure realism unsatisfying in 
art. Realism is necessary, but not sufficient. 
For instance, if you bring me a photo- 
graph of a beautiful elm-shaded street in an 
old New England town, it fills my eye 
instantly with a delightful scene. But by 
and by something in it begins to offend me, 
and I see that the telegraph-pole is too 
obtrusive, and spoils the composition and 
balance of the picture. The photograph 
loses its value as a pleasure-giving piece of 
realism. Now a painter in reproducing the 
same scene would probably have left out 
the telegraph-pole. That is the difference. 
And that is why photography, as usually 
practised, is not one of the fine arts. It is 
said by those who contend for realism, for 
the photographic in literature, that art must 
be true to nature, and so it must, to a certain 
extent; but there are other things beside 
the physical fact to which it must be true. 
Your photograph was true to nature, but it 
was not true to my memory of the scene. 

44 



sue ^nvpom of ^ottvp 

The painter's reproduction was truer to that; 
he preserved for me the delightful impres- 
sion that I carried away on that wonderful 
June morning, when I visited the spot. For 
me his picture is more accurate than the 
photograph. When I was there, I probably 
did not see the telegraph-pole at all. It 
is therefore right that literature and art 
should attempt something more than the 
exact reproduction of things as they are, and 
should give us the vision, not the view, of 
a city more charming and a country more 
delectable to dwell in than any our feet have 
ever trod, and should people its world with 
characters varied and fascinating as in real 
life, but even more satisfying than any we 
have ever known. 

There is another reason why art must 
be more than photographic; as time goes 
by and the earth grows old, man himself 
develops, however slowly, in nobleness and 
understanding. His life becomes different 
from what it was. He gradually brings it 

45 



©tie JPoetts of affr 

into conformity with certain ideals and 
aspirations which have occurred to him. 
These new ideals and aspirations have always 
made their first appearance in art and litera- 
ture before they were realized in actual life. 
Imagination is our lamp upon the difficult 
path of progress. So that even in its out- 
ward aspect, art must differ from nature. 
The world is by no means perfect, but it 
is always tending toward perfection, and it 
is our business to help that tendency. As 
long as we are satisfied with the photograph, 
we are content to have the telegraph-pole. 
And we shall continue to be satisfied with 
them both until the artist comes and shows 
us the blemish. As soon as we perceive the 
fault, we begin to want the telegraph-pole 
removed. This is what a clever writer 
meant when he said that art does not follow 
nature, but nature follows art. We must 
make our lives more and more beautiful, 
simply because, by so doing, we make our- 
selves more healthy and happy. To this 

46 



end, art must supply us with standards, and 
keep us constantly reminded of what perfec- 
tion is, so that living much in the influence of 
good art, ugliness may become less and less 
possible. 

I lay so much stress on this point because 
we have somewhat lost the conviction that 
literature and art must be more beautiful 
than life. We readily admit that they must 
be sincere servants of truth, and exemplars 
of noble sentiment, but there is an idea 
abroad, that, in its form and substance, art 
need only copy nature. This, I believe, is 
what our grandfathers might have called 
a pestilent heresy. 

If art and literature are devoted to the 
service of beauty, no less are they dedicated 
to the service of truth and goodness. In the 
phrase which Arnold used to quote, it is 
their business to make reason and the will of 
God prevail. So that while literature must 
fulfil the obligations laid upon it to be de- 
lightful, — to charm and entertain us with 

47 



Srne ^t^ttvs of Hftf 

perennial pleasure, — quite as scrupulously 
must it meet our demands for knowledge, 
and satisfy our spiritual needs. To meet 
the first of these demands, of course it is 
not necessary for literature to treat of scien- 
tific subjects; it must, however, be enlight- 
ened by the soundest philosophy at its 
command, and informed with all the knowl- 
edge of its time. It may not deal directly 
with the thought of its age, but it must 
never be at variance with truth. There 
can be no quarrel between science and art, 
for art sooner or later makes use of all 
knowledge, all discoveries, all new ideas. 
It is the business of art to assimilate new 
knowledge, and make it a power; for knowl- 
edge is not power, so long as it remains mere 
knowledge, nor until it passes from the 
mind into the domain of the will. 

In a scientific age like our own, when the 
limits of knowledge are being extended so 
rapidly, prose is a much more acceptable 
medium of expression than poetry, because 

48 



Z^t J&nvpout of ^ottts 

it can keep nearer to science than poetry can; 
though poetry, in the long run, has quite 
as much need of accurate and wide informa- 
tion as prose has. 

It is only that they make dififerent use of 
the same material. Prose serves to bring us 
definite reports of science, it appeals to our 
reason, our curiosity. But poetry has another 
motive as well; it wishes to emphasize its 
subject so that we can not only know it more 
clearly, but feel about it more deeply. Of 
course prose has this aim in view also, 
though to a less extent, and it invades the 
dominion of poetry whenever this aim be- 
comes paramount. So that in literature we 
must never attempt to separate prose from 
poetry, too dogmatically. 

The attempt which literature makes to 
deepen our feeling about a subject is the 
spiritual purpose of art. And this spiritual 
or moral influence is always present in all 
literature, in some degree and condition, 
whether apparent or not. Art has its relig- 

49 



ious value, not because it deals directly with 
religious themes, but because it plays upon 
our moral nature and influences our emo- 
tions. How intrinsically incumbent it is 
upon art, therefore, to stimulate our gen- 
erous and kindly feelings, rather than our 
cruel or violent or selfish impulses. 

It may often be necessary for art and 
literature to deal with human crime and 
depravity and moral obliquity, but it must 
never dwell upon them excessively nor un- 
necessarily, nor ever make them seem to 
prevail. For evil does not rule the world; 
however powerful it may seem at moments, 
in the long run it is overcome by good. 
There is a tendency in modern letters to 
deal with repulsive themes, and depict for 
us the frailty and sorry shortcomings of 
human nature, and to do this with an almost 
scientific emphasis. Some people praise this 
sort of thing, as being true to life; while 
others call it immoral, because it touches 
upon such subjects at all. A juster view of 

50 



2r)if ^uvpout of Ji^ottts 

the matter may perhaps lead us to a different 
opinion. Since it is the prime duty of art 
to make us happy, to give us encouragement 
and joy, to urge and support our spirits, to 
ennoble and enrich our lives, surely the one 
way in which art can be most immoral is 
by leaving us depressed and sad, and un- 
certain of the final issue between sorrow and 
gladness. 

I have not said much about the technic 
of poetry, because I wished first to indicate, 
if I could, a scope and destiny for poetic 
art more significant than we are accustomed 
to grant it. If we first assure ourselves of the 
vital importance of art to a nation, if we 
set ourselves resolutely to change the tenor 
of public sentiment in regard to it, if we 
turn from the absorbing and ridiculous 
worship of superfluous possessions, and de- 
vote ourselves generously to the cause of 
beauty and kindliness, the specific develop- 
ment of poetry may safely be left to take 
care of itself. 

51 



Mo\3^ to Sutr^e ©oett^g 



Surely one may say the first requisite for 
the appreciation of poetry is an open mind. 
To say this, indeed, is only to reiterate the 
primal prerequisite of all mental and spirit- 
ual growth. Once let your mind become 
set or fixed in any mould of thought, com- 
mitted too irrevocably to any single idea, 
once allow yourself to be in the least a parti- 
san or a zealot, and all growth is arrested 
immediately. To hold any notion or creed 
as irrevocably final, is to limit the power 
and reach of intelligence. Experience should 
teach us better. 

I may be an enthusiastic follower of this 
or that cult for a time; but as I have out- 
grown many tenets of thought in reaching 

52 



n^oto to ^unst mttv9 

my present attitude of mind, I must admit 
that my present philosophy is probably 
ephemeral and certainly transitional. Creeds 
are but inns for the pious wayfarer upon 
the road to perfection. We are all higher 
vagabonds, as it were, putting up now with 
one host, now with another. Surely, then, 
I should hold my creed with a light grasp, 
and insist upon it with becoming moderation. 
One may allow a generous warmth of heart; 
one must never permit any heat of mind. 
To perceive that everything is provisional, 
and that the end of our spiritual pilgrimage 
is far beyond our range of vision, — this is 
one of the first gifts of culture. The deadly 
frost of prejudice blights the flower of life. 
It is not only as appreciators of art that we 
need openness of mind, but also in the com- 
mon conduct of life. Modern science has 
brought us no greater good than this very 
temper of toleration, this tentative mental 
condition, this faith which is strong, yet 
flexible. Indeed the scientist offers us a 

53 



splendid example of patient detachment. 
He allows himself to be interested, to be 
devoted, even to be ardent, but never to be 
biassed nor overconfident. He knows that 
truth has not all been compassed, and that 
the conclusions of to-day may become the 
axioms of to-morrow, or its fables and super- 
stitions. When a man of science comes 
upon a new fact in nature, he does not say 
to himself, "Well, this may be all very 
pretty, but I don't believe in it because it 
does not fit my theory!" He proceeds to 
try to comprehend the significance of his 
new knowledge, and to readjust his theory 
to it. 

This is precisely the habit of mind we 
must cultivate before we can appreciate any 
art. Between science and religion there can 
never be any quarrel. Between science and 
formalism there can be neither compromise 
nor peace. To bring new truths to the test 
of old standards is the indubitable mark of 
the Philistine. We must crucify the Philis- 

54 



fi^oto to Sutroe ^oetrs 

tine in ourselves (Heaven forgive the bar- 
barous metaphor!) before we can hope to 
enter even the outer courts of the temple of 
art. I say temple of art, for art at its best 
is essentially only religion in another guise. 
You will see then with what seriousness and 
willingness and sweetness we ought to ap- 
proach art. As it is the business of the fine 
arts to reveal to us new beauties of thought 
and aspiration and sensibility, surely we 
must strive to make our mind, our spirit, 
our senses, as alert as possible — to be as 
unprejudiced as possible, as sensitive as pos- 
sible. And we can never be sensitive nor 
unprejudiced while we permit ourselves a 
habit of dogmatizing. I dare say the tempta- 
tion to dogmatize is one of the supreme 
snares of the Evil One, one of the sins that 
cannot be forgiven unto men. 

Of all lamentable states of mind in which 
we may approach a work of art, the most 
awful is that of the meek and humble igno- 
ramus who admits that " he doesn't know 

55 



anything about art, but he knows what he 
likes." 

My foolish friend, it isn't your business 
to know anything about art; the artist 
doesn't know anything about art himself. 
It is your business and his to try to find 
out something about it. Perhaps you think 
you know why two and two make four, or 
why the sun is yellow, or the sea blue, or 
how birds fly, or water runs down-hill. You 
see it is absurd to say you " don't know any- 
thing about art"; you ought to say you 
don't know anything at all. And as for 
knowing what you like, that is even more 
ridiculous. You don't like the same thing 
to-day that you did yesterday. And, more- 
over, you have not the least right in the 
world to like the wrong thing. 

It is just as wicked to admire what is 
ugly, as it is to say what is false or to com- 
mit a crime. It is just as pernicious a per- 
version of truth to like the wrong things, as 



56 



fl^oto to 3Jttlrfle ^ottvs 

to believe the wrong things, or to do the 
wrong things. 

It is quite as much our business to find 
out what is beautiful and try to admire 
that, as it is to find out what is true and try 
to believe that, or to find out what is good 
and try to accomplish that. 

If I do not like Shakespeare and the 
Bible, you will admit I should have the 
decency to conceal my shameful barbarity 
and pray for enlightenment. But equally, 
if I do not like Walt Whitman or Monet, 
I ought to suppress my distaste. Why? Not 
because these men have been placed beyond 
doubt among the immortals, but because the 
prejudiced and carping mood is hurtful 
to myself. I must approach Meredith and 
Maeterlinck with the same reverence with 
which I approach St. Mark. True, they 
may not be equally inspired; but I do not 
know that; and I can never know it, if I 
come to them with a mind already half- 
made up. 

57 



ffiije poetts of ILIU 

Some persons seem to have minds like 
mazes. It is next to impossible to get an 
idea into their heads; and, once lodged 
there, it never gets out. The avenues of their 
intelligence are all beset with barbs and 
thorns and prickles — a provision of nature 
for the self-preservation of identity, but an 
unfortunate endowment to bring to the ap- 
preciation of art. 

I have insisted on this openness of mind 
in judging poetry, because without it we 
cannot begin to judge of anything. But 
suppose that we bring to the appreciation 
of poetry a mind thus eager, simple, modest, 
and unprejudiced, are there any hints that 
will help us in judging so delicate a work? 

In the first place, it is to be borne in 
mind that poetry, like any other fine art, 
makes a threefold appeal to us. If we re- 
member that art is, vaguely speaking, the 
manifestation of our human nature, we will 
at once perceive that it must partake of the 
threefold character of that nature. It must 

58 



H^otD to Slutrge ^ottvs 

express our mental, our moral, and our 
physical character. And equally it must 
appeal to each of these three phases of our- 
selves, as we bring ourselves under its in- 
fluence. The best poetry will charm our 
ear, will convince our reason, will enlist our 
sympathy. It is the endeavour of art to 
move the whole man. And those persons 
err who lay particular stress on any one 
quality of art at the expense of the other 
two. One must avoid that; one must avoid 
didacticism and sentimentalism, quite as 
much as sensuality, in art. 

In the work of Mr. Swinburne, for in- 
stance, we have poetry appealing to the 
senses in its most perfect form. Every one 
admits that no such incomparable achieve- 
ment in verse has ever been given to us 
in English. Yet it fails of that great power 
over men of which poetry is capable, be- 
cause it makes so little appeal to our hearts 
and minds. In Browning, on the other hand, 
you may often find the perfect beauty of 

59 



Ettt ^ottvs ot Hift 

poetry spoiled by an overstress of thought, 
or by an inattention to form. I do not mean 
this in any cheap and petty sense; for 
Browning usually is a wonderful master of 
versification. But at times that fertile quest- 
ing brain could pursue a curious thought 
too strenuously and too far, not too far for 
philosophy, but too far for poetry. That is 
the difference. And again, the poetry of 
Pope is an instance of poetry which is too 
purely mental in its appeal. Consummate 
common sense is there, certainly; but one 
does not live by common sense alone. And 
while it is foolish to say that the ^' Essay on 
Man " is not poetry at all, as some extremists 
would, it is right enough to say that it is 
not the best poetry, for the simple reason 
that it is content to enlist our reason alone, 
leaving our senses and emotions almost un- 
moved. As Arnold said, that was the prose 
period of English literature; and prose is 
a lower form of art than poetry, it is a step 
nearer science. 

60 



?©oto to 3nnat H^ottvs 

So poetry may be perfectly obvious, per- 
fectly clear in the first reading; it may 
contain much new knowledge and rare wis- 
dom, and yet be very poor poetry after all. 

<* An honest man's the noblest work of God,** 

is a proper sentiment, but it leaves one cold. 
It is just as true, perhaps, as saying — 

a+b «c, 

and just as chilly. On the other hand, there 
is an old friend, the Jabberwock, a poem 
which does not pretend to approach us 
through the pure reason; yet what a fund 
of feeling it has! How we warm toward it! 
The kingdom of poetry is bordered on the 
north by mathematics, and on the south by 
music, partaking of the character of each. 

To be a good judge of poetry one must 
be a completely normal man, with a clear 
brain, a happy disposition, and a good appe- 
tite. If you are one of those weedy, dyspep- 
tic, ill-ventilated, academic creatures, living 

6i 



Kf^t ^ottvp of Hfte 

with your nose in a book, you will only 
emphasize the purely mental qualities of 
poetry; you will miss much of its wonderful 
power through your own incapacity for 
sheer innocent, sensuous elation. And yet, if 
you are beery and gross and self-indulgent, 
you will never understand the finer intima- 
tions of the muse. To judge poetry, one 
must be a man of affairs, yet without hurry; 
a religionist, yet without heat; a philoso- 
pher, yet without a system. One must be a 
generous lover, infatuated, but not insane; 
an unflinching logician, yet not inflexible; 
and one must be an athlete, also. 
It is hard to judge poetry. 



62 






v^ A DISCUSSION was started not long ago by 
a college professor in Chicago who de- 
clared that a man who works with his hands 
cannot be a poet. It is one of those definite 
statements that sound conclusive and have 
enough truth in them to arouse discussion. 
In one way it is true, and in another way 
it is exactly the reverse of the truth. 
^ Under our present social system, or rather 
our antisocial system, a man who works with 
his hands cannot be a poet, simply because he 
can scarcely be a man. He cannot be his 
own master, and he cannot command that 
amount of freedom which every creator of 
the beautiful needs. The creation of beauty 

63 



8CJir %^ottvs of ILitt 

requires first of all that the artist shall have 
freedom to do his own work in his own 
way. But the modern man who works with 
his hands is a slave to our mercantile system. 
In that complex and highly organized ma- 
chine called modern civilization, it is not 
possible for any working man to remain 
free. 

On the other hand, abstractly speaking, 
it is much nearer the truth to say that a 
man who does not work with his hands 
cannot be a poet./" 

What do you understand by a poet? What 
is his office and business in life? What 
part does he play in the world? First, and 
speaking most roughly, he is a person who 
has something important to say about life, 
and has the special gift of saying it su- 
premely well. He must be one, I think we 
will all admit, who has thought profoundly 
about existence. And yet that is not enough 
to make him a poet, for that is the accom- 
plishment of philosopher or scientist. He 

64 



2r|ie poet In f^t eommontpeaUi^ 

must also feel deeply and strongly about life. 
And yet that is not enough to make him a 
poet, either, for many of us feel much more 
deeply and sincerely than we can say. No, 
he must not only be able to speak from a 
great fund of thought and knowledge and 
from a great fund of sympathy and emotion ; 
he must be able to speak with the wonderful 
power of charm as well. 

The one quality which makes him a poet 
is his faculty of expression, of course; for we 
can all be poets of silence. This particular 
gift or talent, which determines whether a 
man shall express himself in words or in 
sound or in colours, who can say by what 
it is in its turn determined? To say that this 
man is a poet, and that one a painter, is no 
more than to say that one has gray eyes and 
the other black. But the difference in char- 
acter, that is another matter; and to be a 
poet or a painter implies being a man. The 
man behind the faculty, that is the important 
thing. 

65 



The poet must delight our senses with the 
inevitable beauty of his cadences, his diction, 
his rhythms — with what is often called 
technique; he must enlist our sympathy 
through his own strong and generous emo- 
tional nature; he must convince our minds 
by his own reasonableness. He appeals to 
our sense of beauty, but not to that sense 
alone; he appeals to our sense of goodness, 
but not to that sense alone; he appeals to our 
sense of truth, but not to that sense alone. 
His appeal is to all three, and to all three 
equally. 

The gift of technique, with the poet as 
with all artists, is largely a matter of en- 
dowment. But what he has to say about 
life will depend on how profoundly he has 
thought about it, and how keenly he feels 
about it. And unless a man has shared in 
our common life in the world, I cannot see 
how his opinions can have any great value, 
or his emotional preferences any great sig- 
nificance. But our common life in the 

66 



8rJie Jloet in tftt eommonUiealtl^ 

world implies a certain amount of work 
with the hands, so that the conclusion seems 
inevitable, " A man who does no work with 
his hands cannot be a poet." 

The argument is so simple. How can I 
talk to you with any hope of a common 
understanding, when I only know the facts at 
second hand, while you have actually ex- 
perienced them, and when I have no caring 
about them one way or the other, while to 
you they are matters of life and death? The 
idea that a poet can ever be a mere by- 
stander, an onlooker at life, seems to me too 
palpably impossible to need refutation. And 
I cannot believe that any great prophet or 
poet ever trod the earth who did not know 
the pinch of life at first hand, its actual 
bleak necessity, its terrible pathos and tre- 
mendous joy, its wonderful yet elusive sig- 
nificance. Nor do I believe that one for 
whom all the necessities and comforts and 
luxuries of life have been gratuitously pro- 



67 



SCifte ^ottvs of atfe 

vided, from the cradle to the grave, ever 
can know these things. 

'^In moments of insight, in hours of con- 
templation, doubtless the poet is a bystander, 
as we all may be at times. But he cannot 
be that exclusively. A man who never halts 
to look upon life in questioning wonder, is 
no worse fitted to be an artist than one who 
spends his whole time in speculation and 
dreaming. The one has no knowledge save 
experience, the other no experience save in 
theory. 

If a man has never driven a nail in his 
life, nor built a fire, nor turned a furrow, nor 
picked a barrel of apples, nor fetched home 
the cows, nor pulled an oar, nor reefed a 
sail, nor saddled a horse, nor carried home 
a bundle of groceries from town, nor weeded 
the garden, nor been lost in the woods, nor 
nursed a friend, nor barked his shin, nor 
been thankful for a free lunch, do you 
think it is likely he will have anything to 



68 



2ri)r tloet in tf^t eommontDfaUtl 

say to you and me that will be worth listen- 
ing to? I don't. 

I should as soon expect a child to set a 
broken bone, or tunnel a mountain, or navi- 
gate a ship. Yet this is not to disparage the 
heavenly wisdom of inspiration, nor the 
strange inexplicable authority of conviction."^ 
v^The compelling necessity for exertion lies 
upon all created things. And we ourselves 
can only achieve life and realize our indi- 
vidual existence by meeting that necessity 
hand to hand and overcoming it/ In over- 
coming it we become what we are, whether 
we be men or whether we be chipmunks. 
The moment we cease to overcome and rest 
inactively on what we have accomplished, 
that moment we begin to perish. 

There is only one way to be a poet, by 
sweat and heartbreak and bitter weariness 
of brain. And even then you won't be a 
poet, you will only be a man, unless it has 
pleased the powers to bestow on you the 
grace of words. But when a man has some 

69 



faculty of expression, begotten in him by 
some happy circumstance, and then learns 
the taste of life and the touch of it at first 
hand, he will have some feeling about it 
and some opinion on it worth heeding, and 
poetry will come out of him as naturally 
as milk comes out of a cocoanut. 

The genius of the artist secretes beauty 
by some natural process, as inevitably as a 
bee secretes honey, and gives it forth in 
good time for the mystification and enjoy- 
ment of the world. The process itself is 
hidden even from the intelligence that car- 
ries it on, but the carrying on of the process 
is a continual satisfaction. The creative 
instinct of the artist, uneasy with the posses- 
sion of his unvented ideal, is akin to the 
procreative instinct of the world, which 
cannot rest until it has attempted to realize 
itself in ever fresher, more lovely, and more 
adequate forms. 

There is another reason why the poet can- 
not be exempt from the common lot. Afflu- 

70 



ence is not good for artists for this reason; 
affluence is not good for anybody — perfect 
affluence, I mean, the amount of affluence 
which relieves one permanently from all 
need of endeavour. Great wealth, or even a 
little wealth, may make people sleek and 
self-satisfied and fat-minded, but it cannot of 
itself make them either beautiful or loving, 
nor give them openness of mind. And since 
artists are always people with a large and 
vivid capacity for sensuous enjoyment, wealth 
is more dangerous to them than to others. 
It does not hurt a miner, or a horse-thief, or 
a peddler to grow rich, for in nine cases out 
of ten he does not know how to enjoy his 
money when he has made it; he can only go 
on making more and more, and growing more 
desperate every day at his own incapacity, 
until finally he begins to give it away in mil- 
lions in sheer weariness of spirit. VBut in nine 
cases out of ten, great prosperity will spoil 
a good artist; he begins to be so engrossed 
in enjoyment, and he has such a great appre- 

71 



STfit Jl^otivp of Hffe 

elation of the easy beauty of life, that he 
ceases from the strenuous work of creation/^ 
^But, after all, all this is only one side of 
the question, and the whole argument I have 
made only proves that the poet, and every 
other artist, in fact, ought to be and must 
be a normal man — not an average man, but 
a normal man, with all the best powers and 
capacities of manhood in him. He must be 
capable of thought, capable of passion, capa- 
ble of manual labour. No one lacking in 
these three essentials, or lacking in any one 
of them, can be called a normal man; nor 
can he have anything valuable and great 
to say to us about life. ^ 

On the other hand, however, modern life 
IS very complex (and, of course, the more 
complex it is the more beautiful it may be 
made), and we all have to specialize a good 
deal, and it is not possible for one man to do 
more than one thing superlatively well. If 
you would be a great financier, a great 
mechanic, a great statesman, or a great scien- 

72 



JETtie pott in tf^t eomtnonttieaUti 

tist, or a great engineer, or a great cook, 
you must devote your life to it, you must 
give your mind to it, and your love and 
your industry. You may learn to do many 
things so well that the doing of them serves 
to enlighten and enrich your specialty; but 
the main issue, the focusing-point and flower 
of all your effort and ability, must be some 
one thing that you love most, know most, and 
do best. 

Now art (and poetry is one of the most 
difficult of the fine arts) is just such an occu- 
pation as these. You cannot always com- 
pose a sonnet over your evening cigar. Art 
is not an idle amusement, it is a natural phe- 
nomenon, as significant as war, as beautiful 
as the northern lights, and as useful as elec- 
tricity. Of all forms of human activity it 
is the most exacting, as it is perhaps the most 
delightful. And the demand which creative 
output makes on all the energies is just as 
great and just as exhausting as that made by 
any other worthy occupation worthily fol- 

73 



Ciie ^ottvp of Hift 

lowed. If poetry were a purely artificial 
pastime, fit only to engage the minds of 
college youths and schoolgirls, certainly it 
would not be worth our serious discussion. 
But if it is what history declares it to be, the 
voice of revelation, the finest utterance of 
human wisdom, the basis of religion, and the 
solace of sorrowing mortals, if it teaches us 
how to live, how to be happy, how to love the 
right and appreciate the beautiful and per- 
ceive the true, if it illumines the dark prob- 
lems of existence, and heartens us upon the 
difficult path to perfection, then surely we 
may well consider how best to foster it and 
preserve it, and make its influence prevail 
in the commonwealth. 

If poetry, therefore, is such a serious busi- 
ness, and worth the attention of strong men, 
it cannot be cultivated as a mere avocation. 
It will engage all the energies of any one 
who follows it. So that, while it seems to 
me untrue to say that a man who works with 
his hands cannot be a poet, and while I 

74 



acne J&ott in tHe eomiiionttiea^ltii 

think it nearer the truth to say that a man 
who does no work with his hands cannot be 
a poet, I think it nearest the truth (at the 
beginning of the twentieth century) to say 
that a man who earns his living with his 
hands cannot be a poet. He will not have 
time. He will not have leisure for the 
requisite learning and culture; he will not 
be able to know even the rudiments of sci- 
ence and philosophy and social economics; 
he will not have leisure to know the pleas- 
ures of aesthetic enjoyment; he cannot be a 
lover of nature, nor a lover of books, nor a 
lover of many things lovely. 

Why? Because under existing social and 
industrial conditions he cannot be the mas- 
ter of his own time. And while the normal 
man must have enough physical work to 
keep him in perfect health, the average 
man has enough to ruin his health and sicken 
his soul. The whole question of art rests 
on the social and industrial problems. The 
fine arts are closely related to the industrial 

75 



arts. And at present we can have no wide- 
spread national interest in the fine arts, be- 
cause we have no national industrial arts. 
The industrial arts of a people, like the fine 
arts, can only be carried on by men who are 
free and honest and intelligent, and there- 
fore happy. For it is quite true, as William 
Morris said, that art is the expression of 
man's pleasure in his work. But the mien 
who engage in our industries to-day cannot 
have any pleasure in their work. For our 
industrial arts — or, rather, our industries 
and manufactures which ought to be indus- 
trial arts — are carried on by two classes of 
people, the workmen and the capitalists. 
And all workmen, under modern industrial 
conditions, are the slaves of their employers; 
while capitalists, however generous their 
impulses, are of necessity slave-owners. Of 
course the workmen do not know that they 
are slaves, and the capitalists do not know 
they are slave-owners. But that does not 
make the matter any better — it only plunges 

76 



QCfie ^ott in tHe eommontoealtl^ 

both in a sea of confusion, as the blind might 
stumble in fighting with the blind. The 
workman thinks he is free, because if he does 
not like one owner he can sell himself to 
another. And the capitalist thinks he is 
honest because he plays fairly according to 
the rules of the game. But the principles of 
the game are fundamentally rotten, since 
shrewdness of mind does not make right 
any more than might of muscle does. 

The first question, however, is not whether 
a poet should live by the work of his hands, 
but whether he should live at all. And, 
however much we may obscure and injure 
the splendid significance of poetry with our 
incessant and ineffectual sophistries of a day, 
I must believe that the world's need for great 
and fearless poetry is perpetual, and that 
without its illuminating aid we shall never 
come near to accomplishing our destiny. 



77 






There is such incongruity between our 
traditional idea of the poet and our daily 
experience of modern life that we can hardly 
reconcile the two; and our conception of the 
poet in modern life is pretty sure, for that 
reason, to be either comic or tragic. He will 
seem to us anything but commonplace, and 
we cannot take him as a matter of course. 
The typical poet is out of date; and the 
poet of the times is slow to arrive, since the 
time itself is scarcely ripe for his appear- 
ance. If we are to think justly of the poet 
in modern life, however, we must be careful 
not to overvalue his ofHce on the one hand, 

78 



nor on the other to depreciate the worth and 
significance of the age. And the greater our 
love of poetry, our sympathy with ideals, 
our feeling for beauty, the more shall we be 
in danger of undervaluing our own day 
when these things are not paramount in 
men's minds. Let us try to look at the ques- 
tion quite fairly, neither embittered by the 
facts nor led astray by impossible fancies. 

The poet, if we attempt to form a com- 
posite photograph of him from impressions 
gathered here and there through the pages 
of history, is for the most part a serious 
figure, nearly always aloof from the affairs 
of earth, somewhat shy of life and its activi- 
ties, and dealing more in dreams than in 
realities. But to be more precise, as we think 
of the long list of poets whose names still 
survive, whose words still are alive in our 
ears, we shall find them dividing them- 
selves mainly into two groups, — the relig- 
ious poets and the dramatic poets, — those 
who were inspired by the moral temper of 

79 



Zfft J|oetr» of ILffe 

their time, and those who devoted them- 
selves to the entertainment of their fellows. 
The poet is both prophet and entertainer, 
both priest and artist. He stands for ever the 
interpreter of nature to men; that is his 
sacerdotal office. He is also the revealer of 
men to themselves; that is his business as a 
dramatic artist. 

David, Isaiah, Job, Dante, Milton, Shel- 
ley, Wordsworth, Emerson, — these are types 
of the poet as prophet or priest of nature. 
They " saw life steadily and saw it whole," 
but in their heart there burned for ever a 
passion for righteousness never to be satis- 
fied by things as they are. They were for 
ever stirred by a divine unrest; the fever of 
God throbbed in their veins; they could 
never suffer fools gladly, nor look with 
equanimity upon the sorry spectacle of 
human weakness. They were lean men and 
laughed little. Possessed continually by a 
consuming love of the beautiful, the true, 
and the good, and beholding at the same 

80 



8Cl&r Ji^ott In JWolretn mtt 

time how life seems to be inseparable from 
ugliness and evil, they could never attain the 
ruddy and placid contentment of the born 
comedian. The pageant of human en- 
deavour, the interplay of human character, 
so engrossing to many, v^as to them only the 
surface and appearance of the world. They 
were for ever haunted by a sense of the 
presence behind the mask, the spirit behind 
the semblance. To their endless unhappi- 
ness, one must believe, they were driven 
forward by an insuperable curiosity for the 
truth about life, an unassuageable love of 
the beauty of earth, and above all by a pure 
and impossible desire to make actual those 
ideal conditions of conduct and circumstance 
which never yet have been realized by man, 
nor will ever leave him at peace in medi- 
ocrity. 

As long as the stars remain and the soul 
of man fleets with the breath of his body, so 
long must he suffer this bitter divergence 
between " I would " and " I can." To the 

8i 



ffiilt lloettfi of ILife 

great poets of nature this realization has 
come as an overwhelming influence, a bur- 
den of knowledge almost insupportable. 
They could hardly be other than grave, 
impressive, unostentatious, simple, single 
of purpose, strenuous in endeavour, and 
modest from the very abundance of their 
wisdom. So great must have been their 
ideality, so keen their inward vision, it is 
little wonder if at times they failed in joy- 
ousness and permitted a minor strain to 
sound through their messages of encourage- 
ment to men. Thus it is that not all poets 
have been prophets of gladness, but sorrow 
and uncertainty had their messengers, too. 
For the life of man, which is so large a part 
of the poetry of earth, must be given com- 
plete expression in beautiful words; and the 
dominant note of triumphant joy must have 
its undertone of grievous doubt. Through 
the glad supreme assurance of large faith 
and unconquerable achievement, the broken- 
hearted wistfulness of failure must be heard; 

82 



Zftt J&ott {If iHotrern lELlU 

else were our poetry imperfect, and half of 
humanity left without a voice. Moreover, 
those deep consolations and counsels which it 
is the business of art and poetry to furnish, 
can scarcely be rendered effectively without 
the profoundest sympathy with suffering. 
The royal psalmist, on whom so many thou- 
sands have leaned for spiritual support, must 
have tasted the bitter waters of affliction, to 
be able to reach the hearts of men so surely. 
Now, such a conception of the poet in his 
capacity as interpreter of nature and the 
deeper moods of the mind, is evidently not 
the broadest one. When we think of Homer 
and Virgil and Chaucer and Shakespeare, 
and the writers of the Greek Anthology, we 
think of the poet in a very different char- 
acter. He is no longer the seer labouring 
under the stress of an almost Orphic inspira- 
tion; he is the open-eyed, glad-hearted be- 
holder and recorder of life as he sees it. The 
God has breathed upon him, indeed, giving 
him greater insight into the foibles of his 

83 



fellows than most men enjoy, and yet has not 
wholly rapt him out of himself. He is hu- 
man, comfortable, friendly, merry, and con- 
tent, a lover of wine and leisure and 
laughter. He is a lover of beauty, indeed, 
but his keen satisfaction in the loveliness of 
nature is not marred by the ever present sense 
of incompleteness, which must always haunt 
the preeminent poet of nature. The one 
finds the answer to his questions in a shrewd 
analysis of human motives and purposes. To 
the questions of the other, hearkening per- 
petually for some hinted solution of the 
riddle of existence, there is no answer possi- 
ble. Small wonder, then, that the type of the 
first should be the jovial Horace or the 
genial Chaucer, while the type of the second 
blends something of the austerity of Dante 
with the zeal of David. 

Now human life, when all is said, is not 
so very different in ancient and modern 
days. Barbarism or civilization, city or 
wilderness, the conditions vary, but the prime 

84 



8CJjr ^ott tn JHolrttn Htft 

facts of life remain, and it is with these that 
the poet deals. 

In modern life, as in that of old time, 
there are the matters of love and war, friend- 
ship and hatred, joy in the senses, sorrow, 
bereavement, loneliness, faith, disquietude, 
and death; the elemental facts from which 
the fabric of the universe is built, and the 
elemental passions and cravings with which 
we confront them. The poetry of the Old 
Testament, of Homer, or of Virgil, does not 
seem antiquated, except in occasional detail 
of local colour. The lament of David for 
Absalom, the mighty verses of many chap- 
ters of Job and Isaiah, the pathetic parting 
of Hector and Andromache, Virgil's de- 
scription of the bees or the shadows on the 
mountainside, are as fresh as if they had been 
written yesterday. 

This perennial vigour, this power to sur- 
vive the change of fashion and the flight of 
years, is a test of poetry which most of our 
modern verse would be pitifully unable to 

85 



J!Ci|t J&ottvs Of iLife 

fulfil, and which the best of it will still have 
to face. All that is whimsical, fantastic, gro- 
tesque, of purely contemporary value, will 
gradually be forgotten and cut away, while 
a few splendid lyrics, a few noble passages, 
we may imagine, will be jealously preserved 
and handed on as part of our bequest to the 
future. Men will not care to perpetuate 
what is essentially modern in our work, but 
rather what is essentially human, essentially 
poetic, essentially beautiful. In the long 
run only the fair and noble survives, whether 
in art or life, for the reheartening and re- 
generating of the earth. So it happens that 
all great literature that has come down to 
us is infused with a simple dignity of spirit, 
a majestic and pure sincerity, which seem 
for the time quite beyond the reach of our 
own accomplishment. Yet we may be sure 
our ambitious attempts, with all their clever- 
ness, all their novelty, all their exact faith- 
fulness to nature, will be wanting in vitality, 
in permanent interest, if we do not succeed 

86 



^f^t ^oet In Jttoiretn Hift 

in giving them just these spiritual quali- 
ties. 

The spirit of the world is eager but inex- 
orable, always in need of new thought, new 
beauty, new funds of emotion, and yet ruth- 
lessly discarding everything which does not 
help it forward on the long, arduous prog- 
ress of the centuries. The ages to come will 
care no more for our popular airs and songs 
and paintings than we care for those of van- 
ished civilizations. But whenever the human 
spirit, under a stress of intense feeling, and 
in the face of the inescapable difficulty or 
bitterness or joy of life, rises to impassioned 
utterance, that utterance, however slight, is 
likely to be worth saving. This rule is un- 
alterable, and obtains for modern poetry as 
for the most ancient. No art can outlive 
its own time which does not rise above the 
commonplace; and any art which rises suffi- 
ciently far above the average of contempo- 
rary achievement is sure to be treasured. 

This, however, is only one way of looking 

87 



Zftt jpoetrjj of attr 

at the matter. There is much very excel- 
lent art and poetry produced by every 
people, which is not great, and which has 
fulfilled its function when it has been re- 
membered for a year or two, or for a gener- 
ation or two, to give pleasure and encour- 
agement to thousands to whom any more 
perfect or profound work would not appeal 
at all. No work is to be condemned simply 
because it is not of the first rank. Even if 
we have no great artists, it is good to have 
an interest in art, to have a number of men 
giving their energy to keep alive a great 
tradition, until a more favourable season. 
And one demands of them only a modest 
sincerity. 

It is not my aim in the present paper to 
attempt any inquiry into the purposes of 
poetry. But in considering the relation of 
the poet to modern life, one necessarily takes 
for granted certain requirements of the 
poetic art, consciously or not. The business 
of poetry among the fine arts of expression, 

88 



as it appears to me, is threefold. It must 
offer us some delightful counterfeit likeness 
of life for our entertainment; it must sat- 
isfy our intellectual need for truth; and 
finally it must supply us with spiritual re- 
inforcement and consolation. We look to 
the fine arts in general to give us a refined 
pleasure of the senses, to answer the ques- 
tions of our restless curiosity, and to inten- 
sify and ennoble our emotional life. We 
demand all these things of poetry. We ask 
that it shall have captivating beauty of form, 
that it shall be consistent with the most ad- 
vanced discoveries of modern thought and 
modern science, and that it shall supply us 
with adequate standards and tests of conduct. 
We must ask modern poetry, therefore, 
what It has to say on every topic of prime 
importance which bears upon life. We must 
expect it to embody for us all the new and 
wonderful revelations of modern science, 
discarding those old conceptions of the uni- 
verse, however time-honoured and pictur- 

89 



Efft ^Ottvs of ILift 

esque, which recent knowledge has proved 
erroneous. It is not easy for poetry to do this 
all at once, yet do it it must, if the restless 
mind of man is to be satisfied. It is only 
a poet of exceptional power who can see the 
poetry in modern life, its inventions, its dis- 
coveries, its ceaseless and venturesome activi- 
ties, and give that poetic aspect adequate 
expression in words. The poet, particularly 
the modern poet, must have the unprejudiced 
eye and the exuberant spirits of a child, or he 
will not see the world for himself, and love it 
as it should be loved. Unless he sees clearly, 
loves intensely, and reasons profoundly, his 
poems can take no lasting hold upon us, how- 
ever ornate or daring they may be. 

To produce the best results in poetry, or 
in any art, then, the artist must be endowed 
with the alert, observing eye, the questing, 
unswervable mind, and a temperament at 
once ardent, kindly, and above satiety or cor- 
ruption. He must love his age and under- 
stand it, in order to represent it justly or 

90 



8Cf|r ^oet In iWoifetn ILife 

convert it to his way. This he can hardly 
do, if he feels himself out of sympathy with 
its ideals and pursuits. On the other hand, 
the actual world of things as they are can 
never seem quite adequate to the idealist. 
There is no man so uninspired as to be con- 
tented all the time. There will come to him 
hours of divine dissatisfaction, when noth- 
ing short of perfection will seem sufficient. 
Out of the wistfulness and disquiet of such 
moments the creative impulse may arise with 
its passionate longing for beauty, and give 
vent to that longing in imperishable forms 
of art; and these creations in colours, in 
sounds, in magical words, remain to con- 
vict the actual world of its shortcomings, 
and stimulate it to fairer endeavour. 

Having in mind the opportunity always 
presented to poetry, what shall we say of 
its condition and scope to-day? What of 
the poet in modern life? Is it a time likely 
to be favourable for the production of great 
poetry? And have we any need of the poet 

91 



2rf|e ^ottvs ot Hift 

with his visions? Let us admit, what seems 
to be the truth, that there probably never 
was a time when poetry was held in less 
esteem than at present. Why is this? We 
have wealth, we have leisure, we have great 
prosperity, we have peace, we have wide- 
spread intelligence, we have freedom of 
thought and conscience. All these things, it 
has always been supposed, go to make up a 
state of society in which the fine arts can 
flourish. Why do they not flourish here 
and now? Why have we no poets whose 
ability and influence are of national concern? 
Because, with all our comforts, all our 
delightful luxuries, all our intellectual alert- 
ness, we are steadily losing our moral ideas, 
steadily suffering a spiritual deterioration. 
Anglo-Saxon civilization, to speak of no 
other, has become a humiliating and un- 
scrupulous game. Our fathers and grand- 
fathers cared for many ideals, for honour, 
for honesty, for patriotism, for culture, for 
high breeding, for nobility of character and 

92 



Zfit ^ott in ittotrern mu 

unselfishness of purpose. We care for none 
of these things. They have gone out of 
fashion. We care only for wealth, and re- 
spect only those relentless and barbarous 
traits of character by which it is attained. 
That the ideal state must be established on 
material prosperity is quite true. But that 
we should permit ourselves to rest satisfied 
with such prosperity, and even become en- 
grossed by it, is fatal. All that Western 
civilization has done in the past thousand 
years to make life more secure and pleas- 
ant and comfortable, has been done under 
the impulse of worthy ideals and humane 
inspirations. Now, having attained so com- 
plete a control of all the machinery of living, 
we seem in danger of losing what is best in 
life itself. Modern life, with its ambitions 
and triumphs, may seem a very comfortable 
and delightful period to be alive in, with its 
immense labour-saving facilities and its many 
diversions. One does not wonder that people 
give themselves so unsparingly to the secur- 

93 



Eftt ^ottvs of Hffe 

ing of those diversions and luxuries. Yet, 
from another view-point, one cannot but be 
amazed at the short-sightedness of men which 
allows them to spend laborious lives in 
preparing to live. One cannot but recognize 
the shameless materialism of the age, its 
brutal selfishness, ignoble avarice, and utter 
disregard of all the generous ideals of the 
spirit. We have gained the whole world, 
but in doing it we have lost our own soul. 

Here is the theme for the modern poet. 
He is to bring back inspiration to our un- 
illumined days. He is to show us how to 
regain our spiritual manhood. He is to 
show us how to make use of our wealth, how 
to turn our immense resources to some rea- 
sonable account. He must not be a mere 
detractor of his time, peevish and sour. He 
must love his age, with all its immense folly 
and pitiable sordidness; and because of his 
love and sympathy he must desire to re- 
establish for it those moral ideals which it 
has lost. 

94 



^f^t ^ott in Mo^tvn ILffe 

The latter half of the past century had, 
in William Morris, a poet in many ways 
typical of the modern artist; he loved beauty 
and hated iniquity with so hearty a good- 
will that he could see nothing good in his 
own age. He found nothing in it to love, 
and much to detest. That was his great mis- 
fortune. It drove him too far away from 
us. It made him little better than a medi- 
aeval visitor among us. We may be keenly 
aware of the modern lack of ideals, but we 
must not forget the immeasurable service 
which modern science has rendered the 
world. In the sphere of knowledge, in the 
liberation of the human mind, no century has 
been more remarkable than the nineteenth. 
This is no small matter; it is a very great 
glory indeed. But it did not seem to be of 
any significance to William Morris. So far 
as his conception of the ideal life was con- 
cerned, we might as well have been living 
in the age of Pericles or Theocritus. A man 
who cares no more than that for the greatest 

95 



2riie Jloetrj? of atte 

achievement of his time, can hardly hope 
to address it with authority. His noblest 
ideals must always seem to it somewhat 
quixotic and ineffective. 

Of the two great Victorians, Tennyson and 
Browning, the one brooded upon modern 
life, yet held himself aloof from participat- 
ing in it; while the other loved it well and 
partook of its good things, without attempt- 
ing to address himself directly to its needs. 
It was the figure of Tennyson which satisfied 
the popular notion of the poet in majestic 
calm, undistracted by temporal affairs. And 
to the mind of Tennyson all our spiritual 
difficulties and doubts appealed; all the 
movements of his time were reflected in his 
work. Browning, on the other hand, was 
beset by no such difficulties. His themes 
were uninfluenced by the tenor of his time. 
The problems of the human spirit which 
confronted him and engrossed his thought 
were elemental and eternal. Perhaps for 
that very reason he could throw himself into 

96 



the enjoyment of life with such unquestion- 
ing zest. 

Of the other two poets of the later Vic- 
torian period, Rossetti and Arnold, one was 
a recluse, and belonged to no age, while the 
other belonged so exclusively to his age that 
his time was never his own. Though Rossetti 
lived in our own day, there is no touch of 
modernity in his work. And Arnold, who 
comprehended his age so well, was denied 
the leisure which poetry demands. 

The poet in modern life, if one may in- 
dulge the fancy for creating an almost im- 
possible figure, would have some of the 
characteristics of all these men. He should 
have all of Matthew Arnold's insight into 
the trend of social events, all of the sympathy 
of William Morris, all of the large poise 
and self-possession of Tennyson. Most of all, 
perhaps, he would resemble Browning in 
philosophic power combined with a vigorous 
love of life. 

Among poets more strictly contemporary 
97 



Efit ^oetts of aiff 

than these, there are two of marked popu- 
larity and preeminent achievement, whose 
position entitles them to be considered more 
or less typical in modern life. Mr. Rudyard 
Kipling and Mr. James Whitcomb Riley 
are perhaps the only English-speaking poets 
of the day who can command a respectful 
hearing. Others may be listened to by a few 
hundred admirers, but these men, when they 
speak, address an attentive audience, com- 
mensurate with their brilliant powers. They 
are not only read, but beloved; and their 
influence is undoubted. And our ideal 
modern poet, when he makes his appearance, 
if he is to inherit some of the traits of the 
greater Victorians, should also possess some 
of the qualities of our distinguished friends 
who have written " The Seven Seas " and 
" Poems Here at Home." He should have 
Mr. Kipling's capacity for perceiving ro- 
mance in the midst of the seemingly com- 
monplace, and Mr. Riley's untarnished 
spirit of kindliness toward this great, foolish, 

98 



cue ^oH in iWotretn iLffe 

distracted world. He would be tolerant and 
intensely human as they are, he would love 
his age, as they do, but, at the same time, if 
such a thing were not impossible, he would 
be horrified at the consuming greed which 
is the ruling passion in modern life, and 
he would be unconquerably possessed by a 
love of justice and goodness nowhere para- 
mount in the poetry of the day. 

Meanwhile, our modern bard, of whom 
we expect so many impossible virtues, will 
not have a very encouraging progress toward 
recognition. If he have means at his dis- 
posal, he will have to face the many dis- 
tractions which modern society can make 
so alluring; and if he have none, he will 
have to face the still less desirable fate of 
slow starvation. For no man can serve two 
mistresses, and the muse will not tolerate a 
rival near the throne. Her devotee must 
ofifer her a single-hearted service, and be con- 
tent with a hod-carrier's wage. He will have 
a taste for good books, good pictures, good 

99 



music, and all the charming refinements of 
the modern world, and yet he must be satis- 
fied to enjoy them only in the homes of 
others. He will need all the fortitude and 
cheerfulness of the poor. Indeed, he will 
need more of those admirable qualities than 
the poor possess, since his appreciation of 
all that is beautiful and elegant in life is 
so much keener and more profound than 
theirs. 

It may be contended that the finest achieve- 
ments of art are born of discouragement and 
privation, but I must believe there is a limit 
to the beneficial influence of these severe 
conditions. A modicum of discouragement, 
a few years of privation, are probably whole- 
some and tonic to the artistic temper. A 
lifetime of them seems more than is neces- 
sary. And we are always in danger of 
having genius perish at our doors. How- 
ever, perhaps it is better that one genius 
should perish than that a hundred mediocre 



lOO 



cut JPott In iWotretn ILlft 

sentimentalists should fill the world with 
babbling. 

But we must not leave our subject with so 
discouraging and petulant a thought. In all 
that I have said I have had in mind only the 
more serious aspects of poetry; but it is for 
ever to be remembered that the fine arts 
were born from sheer exuberance of spirits, 
and can never flourish long in any dolorous 
mood. They are analogous to the play of 
animals and children; they indicate excess 
of happiness and effervescence of life; they 
mean always that some mortal had more joy 
than he could hold, and must find vent for it 
in expression. The fine arts are quite super- 
fluous in any scheme of life which looks only 
to the maintenance of a bare subsistence; 
they could never spring from a condition of 
bleak, unmitigated slavery. There must be 
some elasticity of spirit, some freedom of 
mind and action, to support them. They 
must, in truth, echo the sorrows of the world; 
but far more must they embody its gladness, 

lOI 



scut ^ottvp of mu 

its strength, its loveliness, its confident and 
careless manhood. 

If the modern artist cannot have a good 
time living, he had better go out of business; 
success in art is not for him. If the modern 
poet cannot find a way to take life gaily, re- 
sourcefully, unquerulously, he had better 
quench his songs. He must be poor-spirited, 
indeed, if, in a time like this, so full of 
generosity, of confidence, of elation, he can- 
not find something to be happy about. He 
may have some difficulty in meeting his 
obligations, but he should certainly be able 
to present a gentle and cheerful manliness 
to the world, and manage to participate in its 
gaiety. He must not be less a man than his 
struggling fellows, but more. He must 
not be abashed or envious at any overabun- 
dance of worldly splendour, but exhibit a 
keen enjoyment of beauty and elegance and 
leisure, such as very few of our magnificent 
moderns can attain. He may sometimes 
think life is difficult, and poetry the most 

I02 



©tie mtt in montvn Hife 

thankless of all pursuits; but he must still 
be glad to be alive, or no one will care 
whether he lives or not. Above all, he must 
see to it that no drop of the poison of ennui 
finds its way into his work. He must be so 
loyal to his beautiful art, that he will gladly 
keep it unimpaired by any chance misfor- 
tune of his own. However like a failure his 
own career may seem to him; however utterly 
he may lose at times the wholesome appetite 
for life, the longing for wisdom and beauty, 
the zest for achievement; however his spirit 
and flesh may fail before the mighty and 
inexorable enigma, he will still bear himself 
with courage before others, and look forth 
upon the confused concourse of life with 
an uncraven mind. So doing, he will utter 
no word of personal plaint, but carefully 
guard his poetry from the note of dejection. 
For he will perceive that his art is greater 
than himself, and scrupulously embody in his 
work only his gladsome and encouraging 
experiences, letting his darker hours perish 

103 



Zftt ^ottva of nift 

unrecorded. However bitter existence may 
taste to him personally, he surely cannot 
help seeing that in the long run, in the large 
account, life as a whole is desirable, and art 
as a whole is the reflection of its goodly joy. 



104 



Cije IBtfmtt of ©oetrg 



There have been many volumes written in 
defence of poetry, and every little while some 
fresh champion springs to its rescue with a 
diligent apology. But that raises the pre- 
vious question, Why should poetry need 
any defence? 

Has it survived until now, only to perish 
in the latter days of the world of neglect and 
inattention? It has always had defenders; 
it has always seemed to need apologists; and 
yet it does subsist. The truth is, one may say 
that poetry is the voice of the better self, and 
always needs to be defended from the less 
fortunate toiling self, who must bear the 
brunt of life, and sometimes grows cynical 
under the strain. That part of us which 

105 



has to go to the ofBce or the field, which must 
drive an axe or a pen all day to wrest a 
living from the clutch of nature, is not apt 
to be overtolerant of leisure and contempla- 
tion and the delights of the fine arts. 

To become engrossed in the necessary 
pursuits of average existence, is to lose 
patience and sympathy with the finer appre- 
ciation of the poetry of life; and yet the 
wise man will be able to give his strength 
to strenuous service in practical affairs, will 
be a constant benefactor to his fellows in 
eminently substantial ways, will efficiently 
put his shoulder to the muddy wheel, while 
he is at the same time accumulating a re- 
serve-fund of refreshing enthusiasm for the 
poetry of life as he sees it. No wise man is 
a scoffer, nor a disbeliever in the beautiful. 
This is true among all kinds of men, whether 
they live in the west end of London or the 
east side of New York. The poor foreigner 
who lives at starvation wages in the tene- 
ments, and yet saves enough to educate his 

1 06 



a;^^ Befence of lloftti? 

boy for better things, does not need any 
defence of poetry. He is a faithful believer 
already. The rich American, whose orbit 
lies between Wall Street and the park, is 
not necessarily in need of any defence of 
poetry; his love of beauty, his devotion to 
art, may form a very wide angle of his 
pie. 

Nevertheless, for the majority of us, the 
enchantment of material possessions is all- 
powerful, and we hold them at an inflated 
value. So that poetry is always in need of a 
defence; we are always in need of friends 
of the spirit, and of helps toward the finest 
enjoyments; we need to be delivered from 
our own worse elements. There is no surer 
escape from the prison of the worse self 
than through the door of beautiful expres- 
sion. If we can follow any one of the arts 
or crafts, ever so humbly, we have, indeed, 
an exceptional lot, happy beyond the fortune 
of the majority. But even barring this ad- 
vantage, we may still escape through the 

107 



expression of others; we may be lovers and 
appreciators of the artistic and the beautiful; 
we may borrow for a moment some phrase 
of Wordsworth or Stevenson that exactly 
speaks our own thought; or some tint from 
Turner or Monet that exactly conveys our 
own vision; and so we become sharers with 
these masters of the universal joy of self- 
expression. They have thus helped us to 
realize our own emotion, to visualize our 
own vague fancy; they have brought us into 
relation with the outer ocean of truth; they 
have given us passage out into the deep water 
of emotional being; they have liberated us 
from the petty shallows of our smaller selves. 
The liberal arts are those which make us 
free; a liberal education is one which gives 
us the freedom of the commonwealth of the 
spirit. 

I fancy that the joy of any great artist, a 
great author like Browning, or a great 
painter like Millet, must reside in this, that 
he feels himself closely a part of a greater 

io8 



St|f 'Btftntt ot ^ottvs 

life than his own. He is an interpreter, using 
the common symbols of our own speech, and 
communicating to us messages from the 
ancient, uncorrupted language of universal 
aspiration. He talks to us in terms more 
apt and beautiful than we could ever invent; 
he brings us the zest of conviction, the stir 
of wonder. When we take his expressions 
for a moment and make them our own, we 
can no longer be mean, nor petty, nor sordid, 
nor engrossed in unworthy pursuits. We 
have touched what is more attractive and 
entrancing, and henceforth must live by 
that more alluring standard of enjoyment. 
To be sensitive to new impressions of beauty, 
to be able to fill each minute with some keen 
sense of ennobling joy, this is a great part 
of the secret of happiness; and it is this that 
art can help us to attain. Hardly anything 
else can help us so much or so well. 

Therefore, poetry, be it said again, needs 
no defender, save against the vandal within 
us. There is no man walking this earth who 

109 



is not himself a defender of poetry in his 
best moments, and a forwarder of that golden 
age which is ever fleeting like a shadow 
before us. 



no 



^t0taste for ©oetrg 



Whether or not there actually is a grow- 
ing distaste for the higher kinds of poetry 
is more a matter of observation than of judg- 
ment; and the opinion of a statistician, if he 
could find the proper data anywhere, would 
be more valuable than that of the wisest 
critic. I have no means of coming to an ade- 
quate conclusion on the subject, but I dare 
say many thoughtful persons must regretfully 
share the recent apprehension that poetry 
has nothing like the hold it used to have on 
men's minds. 

This, however, would not necessarily 
mean the final decay of poetry as a fine art 
It might only indicate a temporary condi- 
tion, a passing fluctuation of history. Periods 

III 



JTlir i^oettrs of mtt 

of fine civilization, of intellectual freedom 
and spiritual activity, have before now given 
place to ages of grossness, barbarism, igno- 
rance, and decay. They may again. If 
not a book of poetry were sold in a year, it 
would not prove the death of poetry; it 
would only prove the degeneration of the 
time. At least that is the faith which the 
story of man up to the present time justifies 
us in holding. 

The division of poetry into descriptive, 
lyrical, reflective, and narrative (epic and 
dramatic) is useful academically; but it 
will hardly give us sufficient help in deter- 
mining the relative value of poetical works, 
and is very likely to lead us astray. We 
should scarcely be justified in calling " The 
Lady of the Lake " or " The Lays of Ancient 
Rome " a higher kind of poetry than " Tears, 
Idle Tears," or "Lead, Kindly Light," 
simply because the former deal with action 
and the latter with emotion, — though this, 
perhaps, is citing a rather unfair compari- 

112 



m^tuntt for ^ottvs 

son. I believe we shall derive more help 
in our consideration of the subject, if we re- 
flect rather on the aims and natural function 
of poetry, than on the various forms in which 
it manifests itself. 

There are essential qualities common to all 
poetry, and the excellence or eminence of 
poetry depends on the extent to which these 
qualities are present and the proportion in 
which they coexist in any particular in- 
stance. Poetry, like the other fine arts, has 
arisen in answer to definite permanent needs 
in our human constitution. It is a subli- 
mated means of expression or communica- 
tion, transcending our daily speech, and 
helping us to realize ourselves. It fixes the 
delight of our happiest moments in some 
recognizable shape to add to the delight of 
others. It may be called a criticism of life, 
because it contains the wisest and most ma- 
ture thought of the race. It is more than a 
criticism of life, however, since it records 
not only the best that has been thought, but 

113 



8Ciie J&ottt» Of 2L(fe 

the best that has been felt, also, as Arnold 
himself says. It is not content to appeal to 
our minds, it must appeal to our emotions- 
also; it must move as well as inform us; 
it must convince us by its reasonableness, and 
at the same time it must quicken us by its 
passionate sympathy and warmth. In addi- 
tion to these two essential qualities which 
good poetry possesses, it must have another: 
it must appeal to our instinct for beauty, it 
must charm our aesthetic sensibility with its 
rhythms and cadences and lovely sounds 
and entrancing images. It must give us 
thought, indeed, but thought " touched with 
emotion," thought suffused with feeling and 
drenched with beauty. When a poem does 
these three things for us in an eminent de- 
gree, it matters very little whether it is 
lyrical or epic. 

Poetry may, of course, show one quality 
without the others or in excess of the others. 
It may be extremely thoughtful at the ex- 
pense of emotion and beauty, as in the case of 

114 



IBlntuntt for ^ottts 

some of Browning's longer poems; or it may 
appeal chiefly to our feelings, as in the case 
of so many sentimental poets; while, again, 
its chief preeminence may be its wonderful 
mastery of sensuous beauty, as in the work 
of the pre-Raphaelites. But in whichever 
way poetry excels, it is just that particular 
excellence that gives it value. The com- 
parative worth of a poem depends on the 
intensity with which it reaches us and the 
profoundness with which it influences our 
springs of action. 

Poetry can never have its utmost efiFect 
except when it makes use of these three 
avenues of approach, and sways our person- 
ality in each of these three ways. 

Again, great poetry, like any great artj 
is only produced in exceptional moments; 
it is not the product of average every-day 
life, but of every-day life raised to the pitch 
of normal perfection; it is the record of 
heightened, if not unusual, experience. It 
gives definite utterance and memorable form 

115 



Cfje ^ottvp of Hift 

to our universal aspirations and reflections. 
Whenever a piece of human experience is 
embodied in words, with more clarity of 
thought, more intensity of feeling, more 
haunting charm of speech, than have ever 
before been bestowed upon it, then is a new 
poem created which outranks all others 
on the same theme. It is widely appre- 
ciated because it refers to a common ex- 
perience, and it is highly prized because 
it makes us realize that experience with un- 
common vividness and intensity. It attains 
value in our eyes, and will continue to be 
treasured until in its turn it is superseded 
by another even more true, more stirring, 
and more beautiful. 

These fortunate occurrences, these happy 
realizations of the creative impulse, seem 
to be quite beyond the control even of the 
sanest poets. Homer nods, and Wordsworth 
is often far from his best. No poet, if all 
his poetry could be recovered, but would 
have some verse to show which would prove 

ii6 



Wintuntt for ^ottvs 

him fallible. All the more wonderful, there- 
fore, seem the instances of perfection; so 
that we have come to attribute them to in- 
spiration and to invest them with reverence. 
This exceptional quality which we prize 
in poetry is not, let us remember, one of 
technique alone. We do not value most 
highly poetry which is most beautiful in 
execution, unless it also satisfies our longing 
for the true and the sublime. It must record 
for us the noblest aspirations of the human 
spirit, the ultimate reach of the soul after 
goodness ; and it must reveal to us the clear- 
est, widest view of truth the human mind 
can attain. These spiritual and intellectual 
feats are only to be achieved in rare moments 
of ecstasy and insight, when the individual 
is lifted out of himself and brought into rela- 
tion with the larger thought and volition of 
the universe, — of the overself. Naturally 
such rare and exceptional experiences cannot 
be appropriately expressed in common or 
average language. They demand heightened 

117 



8CJ|e ^ottvs of ILife 

and transfigured forms of expression for 
their embodiment; and only when they 
succeed in finding such appropriate lodg- 
ment for themselves are their purpose and 
destiny fulfilled. 

Such experiences manifest themselves in 
all the arts, and enrich the world with shapes 
of beauty. When they choose the medium of 
words, and succeed in moulding it to some 
happy presentiment of themselves, they pro- 
duce poetry of the highest rank, of whatever 
variety it may happen to be. The Book of 
Job, the Psalms, the Iliad, the plays of 
Shakespeare, have never been superseded, 
because they have never been surpassed. 
They deal with permanent human interests 
and perplexities that will draw men's atten- 
tion as long as the world lasts, and they deal 
with them in a supremely beautiful way. 
If ever they are supplanted in our affection- 
ate esteem, it will be because these same 
themes will have found other poets to treat 
them even more appropriately, — more lov- 

ii8 



mutantt for ^oettj? 

ingly and convincingly and with greater 
charm. The future appreciation and fame 
of the poets and artists of any age rest upon 
no other ground than this. 

If we take this view of poetry, we shall 
see that it is the result not only of happy 
concurrences in the nature of the poet, but 
of exceptional conditions in his age also, 
since he, even more than other men, must 
be sensitive to his surroundings and coloured 
by the temper of his time. A dull or supine 
or depraved period does not foster what is 
heroic and ennobling and lovely. This is 
the law which holds in spite of the fact that 
such an age may offer to poetry and art a 
stimulating opportunity, through its very 
disregard of all they hold most dear, arous- 
ing them, by its opposition and contempt, 
to champion all the more valiantly those 
altruistic causes which it holds in derision. 
But in the main the art of an age is the meas- 
ure of that age. The poetry of a people is 
an index to the character of that people. A 

119 



lEftt Poettjj of fLift 

pronounced and continued decline in the art 
and literature of a nation means a deteriora- 
tion in one or more of those qualities of 
taste and aspiration and intellectual power 
from which art and literature spring. 

If, therefore, there actually is a growing 
distaste for good poetry among us, only 
two conclusions are possible. The fault is 
either in ourselves or in poetry. Either we 
have become so supine, spiritually and aes- 
thetically, that the lofty ideals of existing 
poetry are abhorrent to us, or else we have 
outgrown them, and the pabulum which 
nourished our fathers will not do for us. 

There may be some argument in favour 
of the latter conclusion. With changing 
times and manners, many forms of art must 
be laid aside as no longer pertinent. Our 
wants and beliefs are not those of any other 
time or place; we must require the sus- 
taining power of a literature quite different 
from that of the age of Augustus or Queen 
Anne or the Pilgrim Fathers. The past 

1 20 



mntuuu tot ^ottvs 

century has been one of immense and amaz- 
ing unfolding of knowledge, and a con- 
sequent rearrangement of all our ideas. We 
have not had time to assimilate all our new 
thought and to imbue it with feeling; and 
since science must be saturated with emo- 
tion and become part of the familiar furni- 
ture of the mind before it can be properly 
used in poetry, we have hardly had time to 
evolve any poetry or art commensurate with 
our increased spiritual needs and representa- 
tive of our enlarged stores of knowledge. 

Again, much of the old poetry may be 
inadequate. '' Paradise Lost," for example, 
can hardly have the same hold on us that it 
had on our parents. For them it was an 
impressive rendering of what they believed 
to be supernatural facts. It must have re- 
tained for them something of the glamour 
and authority of religion. For us it is a 
twice-told tale, an ancient legend retold in 
our English tongue, less lovely than many of 
the Greek myths that have come down to 

121 



8Ci|e ^otivs of Hift 

us, conspicuous through the stateliness of 
its verse, but holding no unquestionable 
moral sanction, having no such spiritual 
significance as it may once have possessed. 
So, too, the vogue of Byron passed with the 
passing tastes and requirements of his day. 
Because he satisfied the sentimental need 
and intellectual hunger of a hundred years 
ago, it does not follow that he should satisfy 
ours. The same thing may be true of a great 
deal of poetry that was once highly thought 
of, — it may no longer be capable of afford- 
ing the satisfaction which it is the business of 
poetry to give. I can well believe that many 
thoughtful people to-day cannoit find in 
poetry what they need. Matthew Arnold in 
his poetry gave some expression to the soul- 
sickness of his time. But it may be that the 
poetry which is to cure that sickness has yet 
to be written. Is there not a very large class 
of modern men and women who are most 
eager for something great in poetry, — some- 
thing that shall deal strongly with their 

122 



JBiutautt for ^oettfi 

mental disquiet, something that shall help 
them to live, something that shall allay 
despair and reestablish their courage? Any 
adequate poetry ought to do this. Why is 
it not being produced for us? Here is the 
garden; where is the voice of God? 

Perhaps, however, the first conclusion is 
the right one, and the fault does not lie in 
poetry, but in ourselves. There are critics 
who accuse us of a too great devotion to 
affairs, — to the practical and material side 
of life, — who point out our ruthless greed, 
our immeasurable self-confidence, our fla- 
grant corruption, our growing inhumanity. 
If such accusations are just, and if we are 
suffering a temporary lapse into the brutality 
of materialism, then certainly many of our 
finer instincts must be in eclipse, and a dis- 
taste for the beauties of poetry is only a 
natural consequence. Poetry appeals to the 
better self in man, and when that better self 
is obscured, poetry must languish. To care 
for poetry, one must first care for honour, 

123 



STJje poetrfi of aife 

for righteousness, for truth, for freedom, for 
fair play, for generosity, for unselfishness, — 
in short, for all those ideals of rectitude and 
loving-kindness which the long battle of 
civilization has been waged to establish. If 
it is true that our life as individuals and as 
nations is permeated with cheap facetious- 
ness, with disregard for public honesty, with 
disparagement of personal nobleness, with 
forgetfulness of the high traditions which 
belong to our birth, then it would be very 
unreasonable to expect us to care for poetry. 
It is the pious office of poetry to bring 
solace and encouragement and lofty pur- 
pose to the heart. To those who are recreant 
to their ideals it can bring nothing but a 
sense of shame; it can be no delight, but 
only a rebuke. 

But if we are become a gross and mate- 
rialistic people, why does no great poet arise 
to reprove us and lead us back toward per- 
fection? Here is the wilderness; where is 
the voice? 

124 



mintuntt for jpoettj? 

Lovers of poetry are not the only com- 
plainants of the present day, however. A 
gentleman in the University of Chicago has 
been calling attention to the unwillingness 
of educated men to enter the ministry. He 
declares that out of twelve hundred students 
in Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Prince- 
ton graduating this year, only twenty-eight 
of all denominations are reported as intend- 
ing to enter the ministry. Again, where 
does the fault lie, with religion or with us? 
Why should any educated man wish to enter 
the profession of divinity? As a calling, 
religion is almost as poverty-stricken as 
poetry itself, and its ministers as little es- 
teemed. We don't want religion any more 
than we want poetry. Why not? Have 
we outgrown it, or are we so debased that 
it is altogether distasteful to us? 

No sane and thoughtful man can believe 
for a moment that a great human trait like 
our need of religion has passed away, any 
more than he can statedly believe the literal 

125 



declarations of the old orthodoxy. And 
because we cannot find new forms to replace 
the old formulas, we seem to be losing our 
grip on the essential elements of faith and 
piety. But even if this be partly true, faith 
in ideals will return. The power of good- 
ness may seem to be overcome for a time, 
but it must prevail anew as it prevailed of 
old. After a season of indifference, uncer- 
tainty, and worldliness, we shall take up 
the fight again against iniquity, and dis- 
honour, and corruption, and oppression, as 
we have done so many times before in the 
long history of the world, and reestablish 
our broken ideals with the beautiful and the 
good. 

Poetry will return with religion. 



126 



ConigWloi!^ 



I HAVE just been holding in my hands a 
literary treasure lent to me by that delightful 
book-lover, Mr. Irving Way. It is a first 
edition of Arnold's volume of selections from 
Wordsworth in the Golden Treasury Series, 
and bears the inscription — 

To Mima Quillinan — 

from her aiFectionate friend 
Matthew Arnold. 
Septber, 7th 1879. 

To sincere lovers of poetry it is a book that 
must have a very great quickening interest; 
to many of our generation who owe to Arnold 
so much of their training in the valuation of 
literature, it must certainly appeal in no ordi- 
nary degree. Not since I picked up Emer- 

127 



©tie mttvs of mu 

son's copy of Arnold's own poems, as a 
visitor in that well-beloved Concord study 
nearly a score of years ago, have I turned 
the leaves of any book with a feeling so 
near to veneration. For Arnold must always 
evoke, from me at least, that emotion of 
loving gratitude which only one's parents 
and most intimate teachers can call forth. 
Now as I read again this incomparable 
preface, so lucid, so sound, so graceful, so 
courteous, yet so just, so penetrating and 
inflexible in the search for truth, I am re- 
minded once more, as I have been reminded 
how often, of our standing obligation to the 
best in literature and in life. As a friend 
of mine is always saying, " Only the best is 
good enough!" It is the glory of Arnold's 
criticism that he makes us realize this obliga- 
tion, this opportunity, and helps us to a 
temper of quiet sanity, neither censorious 
nor exuberant, in which we can best enjoy 
what is true and ennobling in letters. If 
only we could keep that temper, that habit 

128 



JLonsmiotii 

of serenity and justness, unimpaired for a 
single day, how much we should gain in 
power and happiness! 

It is hardly within the capacity of any 
living critic, certainly it is not within mine, 
to write of poetry as Arnold did. It would 
be folly to try. But when we do our best 
to look at the work of any poet candidly 
and judge it fairly, with sympathy yet with- 
out heat, we cannot but follow Arnold's 
example and precept. In this introduction 
of his to Wordsworth's poetry, so invaluable 
an aid to the appreciation of that great Eng- 
lishman, and indeed so reliable an assistance 
to the study of all poetry, there are several 
remarks which I think ought to help us in 
estimating the poetry of Longfellow. 

" Wordsworth," Arnold says, " composed 
verses during a space of some sixty years; 
and it is not much of an exaggeration to 
say that within one single decade of those 
years, between 1798 and 1808, almost all 
of his really first-rate work was produced. 

129 



A mass of inferior work remains, work 
done before and after this golden prime, 
imbedding the first-rate work and clogging 
it, obstructing our approach to it, chilling, 
not unfrequently, the high-wrought mood 
with which we leave it. To be recognized 
far and wide as a great poet, to be possible 
and receivable as a classic, Wordsworth 
needs to be relieved of a great deal of the 
poetical baggage which now encumbers 
him." 

This is true of other poets as well as of 
Wordsworth. It is not true of Longfellow, 
however. Few poets who have written so 
much have maintained a more even level 
of achievement. While comparatively few 
of his poems, perhaps, approach the highest 
reach of poetry, very few of them could be 
discarded from the whole body of his work 
without some loss to his fame. Partly by 
reason of his exquisite artistic sense, partly 
by his academic training and cultivated ap- 
preciation of literary values and proportions, 

130 



HonflfelloUi 

and partly, I dare say, by a certain strain of 
gracious humour in his character, he was 
saved from falling into such utter banalities 
as our beloved Wordsworth was capable of. 
He seems to have had one of those finely 
poised natures, not common among artists 
and poets, in which the inspirational and 
the rational faculties are pretty evenly bal- 
anced. If he never rose to sublime heights 
of enraptured expression, under the divine 
irresponsible possession of the muse, he never 
sank to absurdities below the approval of 
sober reason. He may not have been capable 
of lyrics like '' I wandered lonely as a 
cloud," and '^ My heart leaps up when I 
behold," and *' I heard a thousand blended 
notes," but neither, on the other hand, could 
he ever have been capable of many a dreary 
passage in many a forgotten poem of Words- 
worth's. 

It is easy to forgive a great poet his un- 
happy departure from the broad highways 
of sane and reasonable utterance into the 

131 



8rj|e ^otits of ILffe 

wilderness of platitude. For we perceive, as 
in the case of Wordsworth, the intensity of 
purpose to which they are due. We behold 
him in fancy, a rapt prophetic figure, pos- 
sessed by the glory of a theme, blinded by 
the splendour of his own vision, and so un- 
regardful of the obvious dictates of common 
sense that he must often stumble on his 
solitary way into pitfalls of bathos and 
quagmires of the commonplace. Sorry as is 
his plight on these occasions, there must al- 
ways be something to arouse our sympathy 
as well as our mirth at the situation. 

Is it not this very unworldliness, this lack 
of the restraining influence of prudent judg- 
ment, this quixotic pursuit of the will-o'-the- 
wisp of the imagination, that enables him 
at other times to scale the lofty peaks of 
wisdom which environ life, and to bring us 
wondrous reports therefrom? It is not the 
cautious, but the daring, who fall — and 
attain. We overlook in many a great poet 
long and tedious passages of prosy vapidity 

132 



or superfluous philosophizing for the com- 
pensation of a few golden words of memo- 
rable significance, a few lines of haunting 
and inescapable poetry. We must do so in 
Wordsworth, we must do so in Whitman, 
we must even do so, I fear, in Browning. 
The poets, like Gray and Keats and Rossetti 
and Arnold and Emerson, who need no such 
excision, are few, indeed. They are the rare 
masters of song, endowed with a less facile 
but more exact and scrupulous genius of 
expression. As they are too fastidious to be 
lavish, so they are too sensitive and of too 
fine a taste to blunder. 

To neither of these classes does Long- 
fellow belong. He is neither a prolific but 
uneven poet like Wordsworth, nor a surer, 
more infallible, though less affluent, poet like 
Rossetti. He is rather like Scott and Tenny- 
son in this respect, maintaining an even 
tenor of utterance with unfailing and sober 
taste, neither frenzied with inspiration, nor 
futile for the lack of it. Not that I mean to 

133 



assert that Longfellow is a greater or less 
poet than any of those here named. In 
matters of criticism we may make compari- 
sons to advantage sometimes, if they help us 
at all to classify our own ideas, and to come 
at a just appreciation of the subject under 
consideration. It is hardly ever profitable 
to seek to establish the superiority of one 
great artist over another. That is a decision 
which time will manage for us very well. 
The great thing for us is to be sure to get 
the best out of his work and take it home 
to ourselves. 

To mention Longfellow in the same sen- 
tence with Tennyson, therefore, need not 
imply any superiority of one or the other. 
They are comparable in the exquisite ar- 
tistry of their work and in the tenor of their 
lives. Both were gentle born; both were 
college bred; both were happy in their 
lives, their friends, their homes; both were 
permitted by fortune to be exempt from 
poverty and the distressful cares which have 

134 



Eongmiotn 

harassed so many poets and dissipated their 
powers; both were serene and moderate 
gentlemen, greatly and widely beloved; and 
both had long unbroken careers of worldly 
and artistic prosperity, crowned at last with 
memorials in the great English Abbey. 
However they may have differed in tempera- 
ment and mental equipment, the outward 
similarity of their surroundings may have 
had something to do with producing this 
common trait in their work, — its scrupulous 
artistic perfection. For it may be said of 
them both that their glory depends on the 
mass of their poetical achievement, — a large 
body of work of uniform excellence. I dare 
say I could be taken to task for emphasizing 
this similarity, and I dare say there are 
admirers of the great Laureate who would 
insist on his complete superiority to our 
American. If so, they must afford to be 
generous; for Longfellow certainly did 
much the same service for poetry in America 
that Tennyson did in England. He filled 

135 



8CJir J^ottvs of mu 

the public eye; he satisfied the popular con- 
ception of what a poet ought to do; he 
maintained the prestige of poetry unim- 
paired; he carried its traditions and exem- 
plified its worth in the sentiment of his 
country. In the day of small beginnings he 
not only made a place and name for himself 
in his own land, but filled the world with 
his fame. 

I must return to Arnold's introduction to 
Wordsworth for another suggestion that will 
serve as well in thinking of Longfellow 
and his poetry. It is this significant pas- 
sage: 

" It is important, therefore, to hold fast 
to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism 
of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in 
his powerful and beautiful application of 
ideas to life, — to the question, How to live. 
Morals are often treated in a narrow and 
false fashion, they are bound up with sys- 
tems of thought and belief which have had 
their day, they are fallen into the hands of 

136 



Ilon0(ellotai 

pedants and professional dealers, they grow 
tiresome to some of us. We find attraction 
at times even in a poetry of revolt against 
them, — or we find attractions in a poetry 
indifferent to them, in a poetry where the 
contents may be what they will, but where 
the form is studied and exquisite. We de- 
lude ourselves in either case; and the best 
cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest 
upon that great and inexhaustible word life, 
until we learn to enter into its meaning. A 
poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a 
poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of 
indifference to moral ideas is a poetry of 
indifference toward life/' 

He then goes on to remark how English 
poetry has been chiefly notable for the suc- 
cess with which it has dealt with life, and 
how Wordsworth's particular glory is that 
he has dealt with it so powerfully. I fancy 
that is also true both of Tennyson and Long- 
fellow. They were both thoroughly ab- 
sorbed in moral ideas and in getting these 

137 



cue ^ottvs of mu 

ideas expressed in their poetry. Not that 
either one of them was specially devoted to 
any pronounced or definite system or code. 
But a profound sentiment for morality, for 
the ethical opportunity of life, possessed 
them. Not a poem in their pages but has 
some bearing on that difficult question. How 
to live. In this regard, of course, they are 
brothers of Wordsworth, yes, and of Whit- 
man and Emerson and Browning also. It is 
impossible to imagine any of these great 
poets writing a poem that should be beauti- 
ful but without spiritual significance. 

Longfellow, then, was not merely nor 
even primarily an artist in words. He was a 
man of deep and serious convictions and 
feelings, beholding the varied pageant of 
life, and desiring to give utterance to his 
thoughts about it. That he should have been 
able to give his thoughts a finished and beau- 
tiful verbal form, was a subsidiary gift. He 
was an artist to the tips of his fingers, as 
has been said of him, but he was first a poet 

138 



— since there is no other term to use. It is 
impossible to read a page of Longfellow 
without feeling this moral force. It is not 
only evident in his obviously spiritual poems, 
like " The Psalm of Life," but is present in 
all of his poems. It is the main theme every- 
where. You perceive that the main business 
of his endeavours is not the creation of a 
mere illusion, however beautiful, but the 
revelation of goodness — the great active per- 
vading goodness of the universe. He is too 
excellent an artist to be merely didactic, but 
he is too excellent a poet to be merely ar- 
tistic. He is no trifler. The great subject of 
life engrosses him seriously and colours all 
his work. He may not have dealt with it 
as powerfully as Wordsworth and Emerson 
did, nor even as magically as Tennyson did; 
but he dealt with it constantly and success- 
fully, and he dealt with little else. 

The ideas he applied to life were not 
new; they were often trite, and his manner 
of applying them was often trite. But they 

139 



8CJ|t J&ottvp of awe 

were always sincere and always suffused with 
gentleness. More than that, they were the 
ideas common to the vast majority of people, 
— the mighty average of humanity, — and to 
that great audience Longfellow will always 
make a stirring appeal. The lucidity and 
obviousness of his craftsmanship, the quie- 
tude of his sentiment, the ever present human 
interest in his work, will always continue to 
find hosts of readers. He may not be ac- 
claimed and cherished among persons of a 
possibly overfastidious culture, but he will 
always be dear to the hearts of thousands. 
I cannot feel at the present time that 
Longfellow restores me to myself as Arnold 
and Wordsworth do when I read them, or 
that he enheartens and stimulates me as 
Browning and Emerson do; but neither can 
I forget that he once did so. I cannot forget 
that he was the first poet to stir that living 
enthusiasm for poetry, which we all possess 
to some extent; that he revealed to me the 
world of men with a certain glamour that 

140 



has never departed from it, and first hinted 
at the sad and splendid significance of life. 
To-day it may take a more cunning art than 
his to work this magic incantation, and 
distil a happiness out of poetry; perhaps 
even the greatest poets can furnish little else 
than solace to our doubtful maturity; but I 
for one must for ever remember the haunting 
flavour of " Hiawatha," or the lines " To the 
River Charles." 

To bring Longfellow's poetry to the test 
of any sort of critical scrutiny, however, is 
a different matter. One must put aside the 
promptings of personal gratitude and re- 
membered preference, and make some 
attempt at impartiality, however inept. 
Perhaps the high-water mark of Longfel- 
low's poetical achievement is to be found 
in his sonnets. At least it is in these rather 
than in his longer narrative poems that he 
speaks with the unequivocal note of genius. 
They have a distinction and dignity of utter- 
ance not always to be found in his work. 

141 



cue ^ottvs ot %lft 

His mastery of technique made him at home 
in that difficult form, while the strict limi- 
tations of the sonnet gave his facile genius 
just the restraint it sometimes lacked. 

In " Evangeline," for instance, I cannot 
feel that Longfellow is always successful. 
The great ease and looseness of the form, 
imposing few restrictions on his narrative, 
often betrayed him into writing prose, — or 
at least unpoetical verse. He does not al- 
ways succeed in being simple without being 
common and flat. So that occasionally the 
poem loses its rightful dignity, and seems 
cheap, where it only ought to seem homely. 
No flaws in style, however, can nullify the 
efifect of the story, or make its pathos seem 
tawdry. It is too genuine for that, and will 
always have its scores of readers as long as 
simple people continue to care for simple 
things, and youthful hearts are moved by 
tales of sorrow and of love. 

In *'The Courtship of Miles Standish," 
Longfellow is somewhat more succinct in 

142 



style. He seems to have gained a more 
perfect control over his hexameters in the 
ten years which passed after the writing of 
" Evangeline." Perhaps the greater light- 
ness of the subject may have given a greater 
neatness and precision to his hand; certainly 
from a technical point of view the later 
poem seems the better, though less stirring 
and serious in its human appeal. That it 
should have become, like " Evangeline," a 
classic in American literature (or perhaps 
we had better say in English literature), is 
not surprising. Longfellow's inalienable 
renown rests on a sort of universal suffrage. 
He has contributed more classics, more 
recognized favourite poems, to our poetry 
than any other American author, more, in- 
deed, than most English authors. And 
among his longer works none hold a more 
secure place than these two tales of early 
Colonial life told in flowing hexameters. 

Only two other extended works of their 
author can be placed beside them in popu- 

143 



larity, — the " Tales of a Wayside Inn " and 
" Hiawatha.'' In thinking of these impor- 
tant undertakings, and in reading Longfel- 
low's life and the account of his literary 
achievements, one cannot but be amazed at 
the facility and ease with which he com- 
posed. That " Evangeline " should have 
been written in little more than a year seems 
creditable enough, but that '' Miles Stan- 
dish " should have been finished within 
three months and " Hiawatha " in five seems 
almost incredible. Yet Colonel Higginson 
notes that " * Hiawatha ' was begun on June 
25, 1854, and published on November loth 
of that year." So that our poet must have 
written about fifty lines every day, includ- 
ing Sundays, and then only allowed about 
fifteen days for the printer and binder to do 
their work. Evidently some people were not 
slow in those days. I hardly know which to 
wonder at most, the unflagging and abun- 
dant vitality of such genius, or the astonish- 
ing rapidity of such book-making. But there 

144 



can be no doubt of Longfellow's copious 
capacity for production. At a time when he 
was longing for a good snow-storm to block 
the door against interruptions, while he was 
working on '' The Divine Tragedy," he was 
still able to write '^ a scene or two every 
day." And again he wrote fifteen of the 
lyrics of '' The Saga of King Olaf " in as 
many days, and that " with all kinds of in- 
terruptions," — an altogether remarkable 
performance, which we can scarcely par- 
allel. Our sounding new cities are built out 
of nothing in a few years, or a few months, 
but something seems to delay our great new 
poems. 

Just wherein the peculiar charm of " Hia- 
watha " rests, it would be hard to say. But 
the unwonted measure, with its monotonous 
" feminine endings," as they are called, and 
the unusual style, with its recurrent phrases, 
were blended together by a happy inspira- 
tion for the depicting of its scenes. They 
keep that air of pristine innocence which 

145 



everywhere pervades the poem; they do not 
rob its themes and characters of the natural 
dignity which belongs to them, and yet they 
have none of the sophistication which would 
have necessarily characterized a more con- 
ventional treatment of the subject. In blank 
verse, for instance, these folk-tales would 
have been much less effective. It is perhaps 
rash to say that the task could not have been 
better done, or that no form could have been 
found more appropriate for this particular 
purpose. Perhaps we do not know the In- 
dian well enough to judge. Our conception 
of him, or at least our conception of his 
legends, must always be coloured by our 
remembrance of Hiawatha. And I confess 
there is an inescapable wizardry hanging 
about the poem which I can never shake off. 
It is one of those things which I could never 
even attempt to judge impartially. Its ca- 
dences and pictures are too inextricably tied 
up with memories of charmed days long ago, 
when bears inhabited the back lot, when 

146 



hostile tribes skulked through underbrush at 
the pasture's edge, and we used to go moose- 
hunting (on real snow-shoes) with wooden 
guns of our own manufacture. 

Longfellow's most ambitious work is a 
comparative failure. Like so many great 
poets, he experienced the irony of the muse, 
and when he attempted most, was permitted 
to accomplish least. " Christus " was born 
of a noble conception, whose fulfilment lay 
beyond its author's power. It was, indeed, 
Longfellow's intention to make this his 
magnum opus. His meditations upon it 
dominated a great part of his literary life, 
and the actual labour expended upon it was 
greater than on any other one of his writ- 
ings. Yet it would scarcely be missed by the 
average reader, if omitted from his works. 
He was far from being at his best in the 
drama, even in a drama of the cloister, such 
as " Christus " is. There is another insuper- 
able obstacle, however, to his success in such 
an undertaking, which becomes apparent in 

147 



"The Divine Tragedy," the first part of 
this noble venture. It is simply this, that in 
retelling the tales of the life of our Lord 
from the New Testament, he is competing 
with that great masterpiece of literature, the 
New Testament itself. The story of Christ 
has been told once for all. An artist or 
writer who would use that sublime figure 
for the centre of interest in his theme, must 
not adhere to the Bible version of that great 
life, but must diverge from it. His work, 
of course, must not controvert the Scriptures, 
but it must be an imaginative supplement 
to them. It must be apocryphal. By intro- 
ducing the words of Christ in all their 
familiarity into his poem, Longfellow in- 
evitably lost his hold upon his readers. His 
work became a graceful transliteration, in- 
stead of an original creation. The epilogue, 
for example, is simply the Apostle's Creed, 
taken verbatim from the Book of Common 
Prayer. The whole poem, therefore, is a 
mistake, an error in artistic judgment. 

148 



We are not to judge any poet by his errors, 
however, but by his successes, the great 
things he accomplished for our lasting bene- 
fit and enjoyment. We need great poetry 
to-day — though we do not know it — more 
than we need anything else. All that indus- 
try can give we are constantly adding to 
life; but the spiritual enhancements, the 
aids to happiness which poetry and art and 
culture alone can give us, we are as con- 
stantly neglecting. With all the affairs of 
daily life we deal with commendable 
promptness and power; to the affairs of the 
intellectual life, however, we are still too in- 
different. It is an old plaint, indeed, one 
that our preachers and critics are never tired 
of dinning in our ears; but it is just, never- 
theless. And as we gradually come to real- 
ize our human needs in a spiritual and 
intellectual direction more and more, we 
shall turn with more and more avidity to art 
and poetry to satisfy us. Nor will poetry in 
that day be found deficient. It will arise 

149 



8rjie ^ottvp of mfe 

at our demand, fresh and great, to supply 
our strong requirements, and we shall have 
a national poetry commensurate with our 
country, with our race, with our dreams. 

But we shall never be exempt from our 
debt to the old poets for all they have done 
for us, and for all they are doing from day 
to day. For if *' the poetry of earth is never 
dead," neither is the poetry of man. And 
among those who have wrought in that wide 
field of human endeavour with so much 
lofty and sincere devotion, the blameless 
Longfellow is eminent and secure. 



150 



^mtmm 



Is it a hundred years since Emerson's 
birth? It is time for another Emerson. 
There will be many still living this spring 
to keep his memory fresh, to recount to us 
what manner of man he was — his personal 
friends, and those who had the good fortune 
to hear his voice. 

There are others whose debt to him is 
also incalculably great, who can only bear 
testimony to the influence of the prophet 
and poet. The man himself they never 
knew. That was their loss and must al- 
ways remain a regret in their lives. Nothing 
in later life, I fancy, can supply the impulse 
which young hero-worship brings; and not 

151 



8Cfte ^ottvp of Hlft 

to have seen one's hero in the flesh must 
always seem an irreparable deprivation. 

Twenty-five years ago, when we were all 
of us even younger than we are now, there 
were thousands of youthful hearts imbued 
with the passion for truth and encouraged 
in noble ambitions by Emerson's incom- 
parable words. Scholars, dreamers, stu- 
dents in college, in the counting-room, by 
the lonely fire of logs, or within the sound 
of hurrying feet on the pavement — the 
message came to them with revelation and 
hope. It was a time when science was des- 
troying superstition. To many a conscien- 
tious mind, being bred under the shadow 
of scrupulous orthodoxy, and yet beginning 
to be touched with divine doubt, the proc- 
ess of change was full of sadness. To the 
thoughtful boy, beginning to turn his eyes 
inward for the source of light, yet enam- 
oured with the engaging loveliness of the 
earth, it seemed the height of tragedy to have 
the pillars of established faith removed. 

152 



ISmetfiion 

Not every one had the hardihood to accept 
all the conclusions of the new science with- 
out shrinking. There was need of a great 
friend whose unflinching courage might 
serve as a stay amid tottering creeds and 
overthrown convictions. 

That friend was Emerson. Other philoso- 
phers and scientists, inflexible in the cause 
of truth, might overturn the temples of 
our fathers, but that gentle yet intrepid 
spirit gave us a more spacious house of wor- 
ship, bidding us abandon the old without a 
regret. He taught us to look with equanim- 
ity upon the decay of dogma, and reassured 
us with confidence in the free spiritual life 
which dogma had overcrusted and obscured. 
He made us glad of our loss and light- 
hearted at being freed from an encum- 
brance. We perceived that while the signs 
and vestments of our paternal religion might 
vanish like smoke, the breath of goodness 
at the core of things remained potent and 
quickening as before. 

153 



cue jpoettff of mu 

To render this incalculable service for 
a growing generation, secured for Emerson 
a unique loyalty and enthusiasm, and we 
came to look upon him with that tender 
reverence which unquestioned goodness al- 
ways inspires. I know not how it may be 
with those who are of age to assume the 
toga virilts to-day, but I fancy there is no 
living voice to hearten and inspire now as 
there was then. However credulous our 
ears, however fervent our fancy, however 
noble and unselfish our aspiration, we listen 
in vain for the confident voice of joyous 
revelation sounding through the world. 
There is now no prophet in Israel, and the 
Philistines may triumph unrebuked. 

In all his prose, in all his verse, Emerson 
is the lover of truth, the advocate of the 
spiritual in life, and the foe of all mean con- 
siderations. Compromise was for him im- 
possible, and worldly wisdom but another 
name for poltroonery. So single-hearted 
was he, so thoroughly the preacher of 

154 



righteousness, that his work does not give 
us the satisfaction in sensuous beauty which 
we derive from many poets — his inferiors. 
It has even been said of him, in this regard, 
that he was not a great artist, that his mes- 
sage was delivered without regard to effect, 
that in him the matter was of more impor- 
tance than the form, that he had no style. 
But this is hardly so. Consider how thor- 
oughly the pellucid spirit of the man per- 
meated all his words, making his phrases, 
often homely and unadorned, more memo- 
rable than the most richly wrought utter- 
ances of other men. His work is like his 
person, as one imagines it — the most radi- 
ant and diaphanous tenement of soul. So 
clear was his conception of the truth, it 
could not be diluted nor obscured, but must 
come to us by the shortest way, as simply 
and directly as possible. He was a speaker 
of precepts and maxims, not a builder of 
rhyme — at least not in the sense that Mil- 
ton and Tennyson were. With him the 

155 



2rj|e poetts? of ILift 

main thing was not the creation of a de- 
tached and finished mechanism in words 
embodying so much moral truth or philo- 
sophic thought, but rather the expression of 
his convictions with the least possible amount 
of reliance on language. He cared for his 
message more than his medium. 

Yet in spite of this, I think we must con- 
cede the greatness of Emerson as an artist 
— as the master of a style peculiarly his 
own. For it is the mark of an artist so to 
impress himself upon his medium, so un- 
mistakably to qualify his work, as to make 
it a unique product, the very image and 
likeness of himself. It is always possible 
to say of the art of any great master: " This 
is his; it can be the work of none other; 
here is the very man himself." And of 
whom can we say this, if not of the adorable 
sage of Concord village? He was an origi- 
nal thinker, it is true; but he also was an 
original artist; he wrote like no one else. 
Both in method and in substance he shares 

156 



with Whitman the distinction of being the 
most novel and significant of American 
poets. For incomparable freshness of 
phrase and trenchancy of diction they are 
only approached, in a younger generation, 
by that other strange, solitary New Eng- 
lander, Emily Dickinson. And Emily Dick- 
inson's output, for all its brilliancy and 
vigour, was somewhat too slight, too un- 
varied, and too thin, to lift her to a place 
among the mighty masters of English po- 
etry, though her place among the lesser 
immortals — the little masters — is secure. 

Emerson himself is not easily comparable 
with other poets. At this time of his cen- 
tennial, a white day in the annals of New 
England, it is more profitable to heed his 
lesson than to take his measure. In the 
bewildering maze of a breathless commer- 
cial civilization, it is well to have something 
tonic and unflinching to refer to. We never 
needed Emerson's radiant faith in ideas and 
ideals more than we do to-day, and such 

157 



Sri^e Jj^ottvn of IBLtU 

2L faith never seemed farther from our 
thoughts. If we have read him and pondered 
him when we were boys, and derived any 
moral stimulus from his wholesome, glad 
morality, let us read him and ponder him 
again. He is a deep well, and we may go 
to him often for refreshment, with no fear 
of his failing. And if any of us have not 
yet made his acquaintance, let us hurry to 
repair that misfortune as quickly as may 
be. To tell the truth, we need the Philip- 
pines much less than we need another Emer- 
son; but since we have got the Philippines, 
we need an original Emerson all the more. 
He will help us to add honesty and refine- 
ment, taste and beauty and modest sincerity, 
to our sturdy self-assurance; so that our 
civilization may stand for something noble 
in history, as well as something gigantic. 



158 



Mt. 3Jtteg*0 ©xietrg 



Even if Mr. Riley's delightful poetry — 
which, along with his prose, now has the 
distinction of a beautiful uniform edition 
— had no claim to distinction in itself, the 
fact of its unrivalled popularity would 
challenge consideration. But, fortunately, 
his work does not depend on so frail a tenure 
of fame as the vogue of a season or the life 
of a fad. The qualities which secure for it 
a wider reading and a heartier appreciation 
than are accorded to any other living Ameri- 
can poet are rooted deep in human nature; 
they are preeminently qualities of whole- 
someness and common sense, those qualities 
of steady and conservative cheerfulness which 
ennoble the average man, and in which the 

159 



man of exceptional culture is too often lack- 
ing. Its lovers are the ingenuous home-keep- 
ing hearts, on whose sobriety and humour 
the national character is based. And yet, 
one has not said enough when one says it is 
poetry of the domestic affections, poetry of 
sentiment; for it is much more than that. 

Poetry which is free from the unhappy 
spirit of the age, free from dejection, from 
doubt, from material cynicism, neither 
tainted by the mould of sensuality nor wasted 
by the maggot of reform, is no common 
product, in these days. So much of our art 
and literature is ruined by self-consciousness, 
running to the artificial and the tawdry. It is 
the slave either of commercialism, imita- 
tive, ornate, and insufferably tiresome, or 
of didacticism, irresponsible and dull. But 
Mr. Riley at his best is both original and 
sane. He seems to have accomplished that 
most difficult feat, the devotion of one's self 
to an art without any deterioration of health. 
He is full of the sweetest vitality, the sound- 

i6o 



est merriment. His verse is not strained with 
an overburden of philosophy, on the one 
hand, nor debauched with maudlin senti- 
mentalism, on the other. Its robust gaiety 
has all the fascination of artlessness and 
youth. It neither argues, nor stimulates, nor 
denounces, nor exhorts; it only touches and 
entertains us. And, after all, few things are 
more humanizing than innocent amusement. 
It is because of this quality of abundant 
good nature, familiar, serene, homely, that 
it seems to me no exaggeration to call Mr. 
Riley the typical American poet of the day. 
True, he does not represent the cultivated 
and academic classes; he reflects nothing 
of modern thought; but in his unruffled 
temper and dry humour, occasionally flip- 
pant on the surface, but never facetious at 
heart, he might stand very well for the 
normal American character in his view of 
life and his palpable enjoyment of it. Most 
foreign critics are on the lookout for the 
appearance of something novel and uncon- 

i6i 



ventional from America, forgetting that the 
laws of art do not change with longitude. 
They seize now on this writer, now on that, 
as the eminent product of democracy. But 
there is nothing unconventional about Mr. 
Riley. " He is like folks," as an old New 
England farmer said of Whittier. And if the 
typical poet of democracy in America is 
to be the man who most nearly represents 
average humanity throughout the length 
and breadth of this country, who most com- 
pletely expresses its humour, its sympathy, 
its intelligence, its culture, and its common 
sense, and yet is not without a touch of origi- 
nal genius sufficient to stamp his utterances, 
then Mr. James Whitcomb Riley has a just 
claim to that title. 

He is unique among American men of 
letters (or poets, one might better say; for 
strictly speaking he is hardly a man of 
letters) in that he has originality of style, and 
yet is entirely native and homely. Whitman 
was original, but he was entirely prophetic 

162 



and remote, appealing only to the few; 
Longfellow had style, but his was the voice 
of our collegiate and cultivated classes. It 
is not a question of rank or comparison; it 
is merely a matter of definitions. It is the 
position rather than the magnitude of any 
particular and contemporary star that one 
is interested in fixing. To determine its 
magnitude, a certain quality of endurance 
must be taken into account; and to observe 
this quality often requires considerable time. 
Quite apart, then, from Mr. Riley's relative 
merit in the great anthology of English 
poetry, he has a very definite and positive 
place in the history of American letters as 
the first widely representative poet of the 
American people. 

He is professedly a home-keeping, home- 
loving poet, with the purpose of the imagi- 
native realist, depending upon common sights 
and sounds for his inspirations, and en- 
grossed with the significance of facts. Like 
Mr. Kipling, whose idea of perpetual bliss 

163 



cue J^ortrs? of %iU 

is a heaven where every artist shall " draw 
the thing as he sees it, for the God of things 
as they are," Mr. Riley exclaims: 

•* Tell of the things jest like they wuz — 
They don't need no excuse ! 
Don't tetch 'em up as the poets does. 
Till they're all too fine fer use ! " 

And again, in his lines on " A Southern 
Singer": 

'* Sing us back home, from there to here : 
Grant your high grace and wit, but we 
Most honour your simplicity." 

In the proem to the volume " Poems Here 
at Home," there occurs a similar invocation, 
and a test of excellence is proposed which 
may well be taken as the gist of his own 
artistic purpose: 

'* The Poems here at Home ! Who'll write 'em down, 
Jes' as they air — in Country and in Town ? — 
Sowed thick as clods is 'crost the fields and lanes, 
Er these 'ere little hop-toads when it rains ! 
Who'll 'voice ' 'em ? as I heerd a feller say 
'At speechified on Freedom, t'other day. 
And soared the Eagle tel, it 'peared to me. 
She wasn't bigger' n a bumble-bee ! 
164 



" What We want, as I sense it, in the line 
O* poetry is somepin' Yours and Mine — 
Somepin' with live-stock in it, and outdoors. 
And old crick-bottoms, snags, and sycamores ! 
Putt weeds in — pizenvines, and underbresh. 
As well as johnny-jump-ups, all so fresh 
And sassy-like ! — and groun*-squir'ls, — yes, and * We,' 
As sayin' is, — * We, Us and Company.' " 

In the lines " Right Here at Home," the 
same strain recurs, like the very burden of 
the poet's life-song: 

" Right here at home, boys, is the place, I guess, 
Fer me and you and plain old happiness : 
We hear the World's lots grander — likely so, — 
We'll take the World's word for it and not go. 
We know /// ways ain't our ways, so we'll stay 
Right here at home, boys, where we know the way. 

"Right here at home, boys, where a well-to-do 
Man's plenty rich enough — and knows it, too, 
And's got a' extry dollar, any time. 
To boost a feller up 'at zaanfs to climb, 
And's got the git-up in him to go in 
And gif thercy like he purt' nigh alius kin ! ** 

It is in this spirit that by far the greater 
part of his work, the telling and significant 
part of it, is conceived. The whole tatter- 

165 



dcmalion company of his Tugg Martins, Jap 
Millers, Armazindys, Bee Fesslers, and 
their comrades, as rollicking and magnetic 
as Shakespeare's own wonderful populace, 
he finds " right here at home " ; nothing 
human is alien to him; indeed, there is 
something truly Elizabethan, something spa- 
cious and robust in his humanity, quite ex- 
ceptional to our fashion-plate standards. In 
the same wholesome, glad frame of mind, 
too, he deals with nature, — mingling the 
keenest, most loving observation with the 
most familiar modes of speech. An artist 
in his ever sensitive appreciation and impres- 
sionability, never missing a phase or mood 
of natural beauty, he has the added ability 
so necessary to the final touch of illusion, — 
the power of ease, the power of making his 
most casual word seem inevitable, and his 
most inevitable word seem casual. It is in 
this, I think, that he differs from all his 
rivals in the field of familiar and dialect 
poetry. Other writers are as familiar as he, 

1 66 



and many as truly inspired; but none com- 
bines to such a degree the homespun phrase 
with the lyric feeling. His only compeer 
in this regard is Lowell, in the brilliant 
" Biglow Papers," and several other less 
known but not less admirable Chaucerian 
sketches of New England country life. In- 
deed, in humour, in native eloquence, in 
vivacity, Mr. Riley closely resembles Lowell, 
though differing from that bookman in his 
training and inclination, and naturally, as 
a consequence, in his range and treatment 
of subjects. But the tide of humanity, so 
strong in Lowell, is at flood, too, in the 
Hoosier poet. It is this humane character, 
preserving all the rugged sweetness in the 
elemental type of man, which can save 
us at last as a people from the ravaging 
taint of charlatanism, frivolity, and greed. 

But we must not leave our subject without 
discriminating more closely between several 
sorts of Mr. Riley's poetry; for there is as 
much difference between his dialect and his 

167 



5Ci)e mttvp of mu 

classic English (in point of poetic excellence, 
I mean) as there is between the Scotch and 
the English of Burns. Like Burns, he is a 
lover of the human and the simple, a lover 
of green fields and blowing flowers; and, 
like Burns, he is more at home, more easy 
and felicitous, in his native Doric than in the 
colder Attic speech of Milton and Keats. 

This is so, it seems to me, for two reasons. 
In the first place, the poet is dealing with the 
subject matter he knows best; and in the 
second place, he is using the medium of 
expression in which he has a lifelong facility. 
The art of poetry is far too delicate and too 
difficult to be practised successfully without 
the most consummate and almost unconscious 
mastery of the language employed; so that 
a poet will hardly ever write with anything 
like distinction or convincing force in any 
but his mother tongue. An artist's com- 
mand of his medium must be so intimate 
and exquisite that his thought can find ade- 
quate expression in it as easily as in the 

1 68 



lifting of a finger or the moving of an eye- 
lid. Otherwise he is self-conscious, un- 
natural, false; and, hide it as he may, we 
feel the awkwardness and indecision in his 
work. He who treats of subjects which he 
knows only imperfectly cannot be true to 
nature; while he who employs some means 
of expression which he only imperfectly 
controls cannot be true to himself. The best 
art requires equally the fulfilment of both 
these severe demands; they are the cardinal 
virtues of art. Disregard of the first pro- 
duces the dilettante; disregard of the second 
produces the charlatan. That either of these 
epithets would seem entirely incongruous, if 
applied to Mr. Riley, is a tribute to his 
thorough worth as a writer. 

His verse, then, divides itself sharply into 
two kinds, the dialect and the conventional. 
But we have so completely identified him 
with the former manner that it is hard to 
estimate his work in the latter. It may be 
doubted, however, whether he would have 

169 



JCfte 3Poett» of a(fe 

reached his present eminence, had he con- 
fined his efforts to the strictly regulated 
forms of standard English. In poems like 
'' A Life Term " and '' One Afternoon," for 
instance, there is smoothness, even grace of 
movement, but hardly that distinction w^hich 
we call style, and little of the lyric plan- 
gency the author commands at his best; 
while very often in his use of authorized 
English there is a strangely marked reminis- 
cence of older poets, as of Keats in " A 
Water Colour" (not to speak of "A Ditty 
of No Tone," written as a frankly imita- 
tive tribute of admiration for the author 
of the " Ode to a Grecian Urn "), or of Em- 
erson in " The All-kind Mother." In only 
one of the dialect poems, on the other hand, 
so far as I recall them, is there any imitative 
note. His " Nothin' to Say " has something 
of the atmosphere and feeling as well as 
the movement of Tennyson's " Northern 
Farmer." But for the most part, when Mr. 
Riley uses his own dialect, he is thoroughly 

170 



original as well as effective. He has not only 
the lyrical impetus so needful to good po- 
etry; he has also the story-teller's gift. And 
when we add to these two qualities an abun- 
dant share of whimsical humour, we have 
the equipment which has so justly given him 
wide repute. 

All of these characteristics are brought 
into play in such poems as '^ Fessler's Bees," 
one of the fairest examples of Mr. Riley's 
balladry at its best: 

" Might call him a bee-expert. 
When it come to handlin' bees, — 
Roll the sleeves up of his shirt 
And wade in amongst the trees 
Where a swarm *u'd settle, and — 
Blamedest man on top of dirt ! — 
Rake 'em with his naked hand 
Right back in the hive ag*in, 
Jes' as easy as you please ! ** 

For Mr. Riley is a true balladist. He is 
really doing for the modern popular taste, 
here and now, what the old balladists did 
in their time. He is an entertainer. He 

171 



2rj|e ^ottvp of WLttt 

has the ear of his audience. He knows 
their likes and dislikes, and humours them. 
His very considerable and very successful 
experience as a public reader of his own 
work has reinforced (one may guess) his 
natural modesty and love of people, and 
made him constantly regardful of their 
pleasure. So that we must look upon his 
verses as a most genuine and spontaneous ex- 
pression of average poetic feeling as well 
as personal poetic inspiration. 

Every artist's work must be, necessarily, 
a more or less successful compromise be- 
tween these two opposing and difficult con- 
ditions of achievement. The great artists 
are they who succeed at last in imposing 
upon others their own peculiar and novel 
conceptions of beauty. But these are only 
the few whom the gods favour beyond their 
fellows; while for the rank and file of those 
who deal in the perishable wares of art a 
less ambitious standard may well be allowed. 
We must have our balladists as well as our 

172 



bards, it seems; and very fortunate is the 
day when we can have one with so much 
real spirit and humanity about him as Mr. 
Riley. 

At times the pathos of the theme quite 
outweighs its homeliness, and lifts the author 
above the region of self-conscious art; the 
use of dialect drops away, and a creation 
of pure poetry comes to light, as in that 
irresistible elegy, " Little Haly," for ex- 
ample : 

" * Little Haly, little Haly/ cheeps the robin in the tree ; 
' Little Haly/ sighs the clover ; * Little Haly/ moans the bee ; 
* Little Haly, little Haly,' calls the kill-dee at twilight ; 
And the katydids and crickets hollers * Haly ' all the night.** 

In this powerful lyric there is a simple 
directness approaching the feeling of Greek 
poetry, and one cannot help regretting the 
few intrusions of dialect. The poem is so 
universal in its human appeal, it seems a 
pity to limit the range of its appreciation 
by hampering it with local peculiarities of 
speech. 

^73 



2r|ie ^ottvs of mu 

At times, too, in his interpretations of 
nature, Mr. Riley lays aside his drollery and 
his drawling accent in exchange for an in- 
cisive power of phrase. 

"The wild goose trails his harrow** 

is an example of the keenness of fancy I 
refer to. Another is found in the closing 
phrase of one of the stanzas in " A Country 
Pathway " : 

•* A puritanic quiet here reviles 

The almost whispered warble from the hedge. 
And takes a locust's rasping voice and files 
The silence to an edge.** 

In "The Flying Islands of the Night" 
Mr. Riley has made his widest departure 
into the reign of whimsical imagination. 
Here he has retained that liberty of un- 
shackled speech, that freedom and ease 
of diction, which mark his more familiar 
themes, and at the same time has entered 
an entirely fresh field for him, a sort of 
grown-up fairyland. There are many strains 

174 



mv. Milts'^ mttvs 

of fine poetry in this miniature play, which 
show Mr. Riley's lyrical faculty at its best. 
In one instance there is a peculiar treat- 
ment of the octosyllabic quatrain, where he 
has chosen to print it in the guise of blank 
verse. It is impossible, however, to conceal 
the true swing of the lines. 

" I loved her. Why ? I never knew. Perhaps 
Because her face was fair. Perhaps because 
Her eyes were blue and wore a weary air. 
Perhaps ! Perhaps because her limpid face 
Was eddied with a restless tide, wherein 
The dimples found no place to anchor and 
Abide. Perhaps because her tresses beat 
A froth of gold about her throat, and poured 
In splendour to the feet that ever seemed 
Afloat. Perhaps because of that wild way 
Her sudden laughter overleapt propriety; 
Or — who will say ? — perhaps the way she wept." 

It almost seems as if Mr. Riley, with his 
bent for jesting and his habit of wearing 
the cap and bells, did not dare be as poetical 
as he could; and when a serious lyric came 
to him, he must hide it under the least 
lyrical appearance, as he has done here. 

175 



JTJje J$ottV9 of mu , 

1 

But that, surely, if it be so, is a great injus- 
tice to himself. He might well attempt the 
serious as well as the comic side of poetry, 
remembering that " when half-gods go, the 
gods arrive." 



176 



JWr* Sli^miume's iloetrg 



It is never very wise to try to make just 
estimates of our contemporaries. At best, we 
can only give opinions limited by our angle 
of outlook and coloured by the atmosphere 
of our own time. This must be particularly 
so in the case of poetry, for the reason that 
poetry makes such a strong appeal to our 
sympathies and is never a matter to be 
judged by the reason alone. 

To speak of Mr. Swinburne with proper 
appreciation one must go back to the early 
eighties, when his wonderful poetry was 
taken less as a matter of course than it is now. 
Those were years when our college tasks 
were interrupted every little while by the 
appearance of some new volume of precious 

177 



poetry by Browning or Tennyson, by Morris 
or Rossetti, and long hours would be spent 
in eager, delightful reading. Arnold, it is 
true, had ceased to write, except as a critic, 
but his name and personality were none the 
less touched with glamour, his work none the 
less cherished. The sixth of the immortals 
of that far-off golden age was the author of 
" Atalanta in Calydon," and in some ways he 
was the most compelling of them all, aston- 
ishing and unrivalled in his accomplish- 
ment. 

He was not so much a mentor as a sorcerer, 
and it was with a sort of divine intoxication 
that we used to chant *' The Triumph of 
Time," "The Garden of Proserpine," the 
close of " Anactoria," or the choruses of 
" Atalanta." In volume and magic of sound 
no English poet had ever matched these 
things, it seemed. They carried us away 
by their unexpected splendour of diction, 
their novel and incomparable harmonies, 
their noble fervour. They came upon the 

178 



impressionable ear like enchanted strains 
from some mysterious land, fabulous, lonely, 
and mournful, yet lovely with all the loveli- 
ness of unforgotten joy. Their sorrov^ful 
cadences, their sad refrains, their pitiful 
sentiment, appealed to the wilful melan- 
choly of youth, while their lofty and uncal- 
culating radicalism quickened its generosity. 
It did not occur to us in those days that re- 
straint was any part of perfection, or that 
these miracles of poetic artistry would have 
been more beautiful had they been less reck- 
lessly diffuse. At least, if any such sus- 
picion ever crossed our minds, we loyally 
put it aside. 

But those bright days of romance could 
not last. One by one the great singers 
brought their work to a close, leaving none 
to take their places; while their youthful 
admirers heard the call of the world, and 
were forced, however reluctantly, to go 
about the world's business. Then, too, there 
had to come a time of riper judgment, more 

179 



^ftt ^ottvs of aife 

discriminating appreciation, more exacting 
taste. As years went by they brought a 
change of spiritual and mental needs; the 
sensuous music of " Poems and Ballads " 
grew a little monotonous and unsatisfying 
in our ears, and failed to charm us as it had 
at first. What the reason for this may have 
been who shall say? In the cold disillusion- 
ment of an age of prose I find myself won- 
dering whether it was due to a failure of 
enthusiasm in ourselves, or whether there is 
really an inherent deficiency somewhere in 
Mr. Swinburne's poetry which makes it in- 
capable of holding one for long. Poetry at 
its best, like all art at its best, must surely 
be a thing of such power as to sway men and 
women of all conditions and requirements 
with more than a passing influence. Its 
hold must be permanent, its zest perennial, 
while its subtle power to move us must pre- 
vail against the slowly benumbing frost of 
time. Poetry which falls short of these 
demands, which charms us for a time and 

1 80 



then can charm us no more, which brings our 
senses under the spell of its enchantment, 
but in the end fails to answer our rational 
questions, can hardly be called poetry of 
the first order. 

Brought to the test of judicial question- 
ing, much of Mr. Swinburne's poetry is 
found to fail in this respect. At least so it 
must seem to many of his admirers, I fancy. 
And while they must for ever be gratified 
for the delight which he gave them, they 
must somewhat sorrowfully admit that he 
can give the same delight no longer, — that 
while the beautiful masterpieces of other 
great Victorians are as potent as of old, 
his have somehow lost their charm. Why is 
it that " The Scholar Gipsy " and " Thyrsis '' 
continue to allure us, while " Ave atque 
Vale" appeals to us almost in vain? And 
why do we grow weary of '' A Forsaken 
Garden," while the simpler measures of 
"The Neckan" and "The Forsaken Mer- 
man " still move us profoundly with their 

i8i 



Zftt IPoettj? of Hift 

pathos and romance? How is it we can read 
again and again ^' Tristram and Iseult," 
" Rabbi Ben Ezra," " Fra Lippo Lippi," 
and '' Sohrab and Rustum," and hardly once 
care to turn to *' Tristram of Lyonesse," or 
"The Last Oracle," or "Delores"? Why 
do not the familiar words enchant us as 
they did? How have the charm and potency 
and conviction escaped from the verse? 
Must we conclude that all Mr. Swinburne's 
passionate reverberance is not comparable to 
" the surge and thunder of the Odyssey," 
after all? 

What makes this difference? I have an 
idea that this poetry never was quite as 
great as it seemed to us. Youth is full of 
ideals, it is true, but it is also much taken 
up with the senses. It does not often demand 
a convincing reason, or look for truth be- 
neath appearances. The sensuous beauties of 
the world, the obvious sensuous beauties of 
art, appeal to it. And if there is one quality 
which Mr. Swinburne's poetry always ex- 

182 



hibits, it is sensuous beauty, beauty of form. 
You may repeat the stanzas beginning, — 

** O fair green-girdles mother of mine. 
Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain," — 

or that incomparable chorus, — 

" Before the beginning of years 
There came to the making of man," — 

until the whole world seems made out of 
poetry, so splendid and compelling is the 
fabric of the verse, so free and sincere and 
impassioned its headlong flow. Yet how 
easily it becomes redundant! 

There, I believe, is the essential flaw in 
this masterly poet's work. He is, if we may 
judge, a man of unbounded exuberance, of 
unbridled enthusiasm; he knows no modera- 
tion nor restraint; he is all superlative, 
always excessive; he will never use an 
adjective where he can possibly use two; 
he is never satisfied with a perfect line with- 
out wanting to duplicate it. From a single 
poetic thought he will brew a barrel of ver- 

183 



biage. He seems never to have compre- 
hended the value of economy in art. It 
never has occurred to him that reiteration is 
almost always a mark of weakness. He has 
never perceived what power there is in being 
concise. He is, as was said of Gladstone, 
" intoxicated with the exuberance of his 
own verbosity," and can never be quenched 
as long as there is an adjective left in the 
dictionary. He must exhaust the very re- 
sources of language before he will desist. 
The blunder is fatal. It is a juvenile error 
which a little judgment ought surely to have 
corrected, but one which Mr. Swinburne has 
never outgrown. All of his later work, like 
his earlier, suffers from this redundancy of 
expression, this lax and indiscriminate ex- 
aggeration. So indulgent has he been of his 
native talent that there are scarcely half a 
dozen of his poems that would not gain by 
pruning and condensation. With the great 
mass of his work, of course, no such amend- 
ing could be possible. Its blemishes are too 

184 



inherent. His genius itself is too diffuse and 
ungovernable ever to submit to those nice 
limitations which perfection in any art re- 
quires of the artist. You may open him 
almost at random and find examples of his 
besetting sin. For instance, you may turn to 
''March: An Ode," and read the first 
line, — 

" Ere frost flower and snow blossom faded and fell, and the 
splendour of Winter had passed out of sight," — 

and feel yourself still in the presence of the 
same sonorous voice that first sounded in 
the '' Poems and Ballads," though w^ith just 
a suspicion of weakness. Before you reach 
the foot of the page, however, you come 
upon the line, — 

" That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor 
the night than the day, nor the day than the night,** — 

and at once feel that all force has evaporated 
from the poem. " Nor the night than the 
day, nor the day than the night" — what 
pitiable bathos, what tawdry ineptitude! 

185 



ffHe ^ottvs of ll(fe 

Yet, to speak severely, he has hardly writ- 
ten a page that is entirely free from any such 
meaningless superfluity of words. His very 
facility has been his undoing. This great 
copiousness of language, while at first indic- 
ative of abundance of power, produces in 
the end a sense of incompetence and vapid- 
ity. Incontinence is a mark of feebleness, 
not of force, and implies inefficiency or 
decrepitude. In art, as in life, too much 
is as bad as too little. Only within the 
range of the golden mean is perfection pos- 
sible. In all of Mr. Swinburne's work, in 
his prose as well as his poetry, we cannot 
help feeling his lack of balance, his lack of 
real enduring power. He seems to be led 
away by every new combination of words 
that suggests itself to his ear; he cannot 
light upon a happy phrase without wanting 
to repeat it in a slightly different form. He 
has a passion for proficiency rather than 
perfection, and is always betrayed into over- 
statement. It cannot be said of his poetry 

i86 



that he writes without inspiration, nor of his 
prose that he writes without insight; but it 
must often be said that he writes without 
judgment. He has passion, indeed, a noble 
passion, for human liberty, but a passion so 
intemperate that it is more like the hysteria 
of the invalid than the divine frenzy of the 
oracle. 

It is a thousand pities that a man of such 
genius should never have learned the value 
of moderation, that prime requisite of beauty. 
For perfection lies on the magic boundary 
between deficiency and excess, and can no 
more reside in the one than in the other. 
Successful art, like successful life, must be 
modulated, modelled, limited, bounded, 
directed. The flawless line of the statue 
appears only when the superfluous marble 
has been cut away. Without modulation 
all crude native force must lose half its 
effectiveness and be dissipated in irrelevancy, 
whether it is manifesting itself in nature, 
in society, or in art. It is not enough that 

187 



poetic inspiration should be spontaneous 
and plentiful in any given instance, it must 
be regulated, controlled, and tempered by 
logic, before it can wholly serve the best 
purposes of poetry. 

Again, all art, and particularly the art of 
poetry, must not only be restrained and free 
from excess; it must be balanced in all 
its essentials; it must devote itself to satisfy- 
ing our curiosity as vs^ell as playing upon our 
emotions and charming our senses. It must 
help to satiate our love of truth, our desire 
for knowledge, our longing for a reasonable 
explanation of the universe, at the same time 
and in the same measure that it helps to 
satisfy our love of sensuous beauty and all 
the generous aspirations of the spirit. Poetry 
has obligations, in other words, not only to 
the fastidious taste and the inflammable 
heart of the reader, but to his clear reason as 
well. These latter requirements the poetry 
of Mr. Swinburne fails to meet. Poetry, 
indeed, must not smack of philosophy, yet 

1 88 



every poet must have a philosophy of his 
own, and that philosophy must be inherent 
and discoverable in his work. In poetry of 
the first order the philosophic pith is sig- 
nificant and valuable. In less important 
poetry it is insignificant and of little worth, 
either because it is trite, or because it is false, 
or because it is vague or fantastic. 

Some such reason as this, if I am not mis- 
taken, lies at the root of Mr. Swinburne's 
comparative failure as a poet — his failure 
to reach that influential place in current 
literature which his great gifts would have 
otherwise entitled him to hold. For while 
we all gladly acknowledge his eminence, we 
must also regretfully admit the slightness of 
his hold on the regard of his age. He has 
been belauded and revered as a master by 
all lovers of technique; he has failed to 
make himself felt as a power in his genera- 
tion. For all his splendid achievement he 
pipes to us in vain. He does not touch the 
heart of the multitude as Tennyson and 

189 



STfie ^otivs of WLltt 

Longfellow touched it; he does not stimu- 
late thought and satisfy our mental unrest 
as Browning did; he has none of Arnold's 
clarity and repose. He fills the ear without 
feeding the mind, and we turn away in 
disappointment from his resonant but empty 
dithyrambs. 

All these ungracious things must only be 
said, of course, in the interest of the severest 
criticism, in an attempt, which is perhaps 
futile, after all, to judge the poetry of our 
own day in comparison with the greatest 
poetry of all time. And they may be said, 
I hope, without any detriment to Mr. Swin- 
burne's fame. For, in spite of all detrac- 
tions, he remains one of the chief ornaments 
of the Victorian age of poetry, that is to say, 
one of the illustrious poets of the world. As 
a wizard of versification, a startling and 
magnificent artist, he remains without a 
rival. 



190 



^i\t Eefe^atirs of floettg 



(A Letter to the Lyric Muse from an Im- 
aginary Correspondent,) 

It is now more than a year, my dear mis- 
tress, since my last poem was written. As 
I was wont to be so unfailingly diligent in 
your service, my conscience tells me I should 
attempt to explain the long silence, for I 
truly feel that somehow there has been a 
breach of duty on my part, a failure to live 
up to my own sense of what is becoming, if 
not to meet your gentle illumined expecta- 
tions. 

Perhaps it has not seemed long to you; 
perhaps you have not even been aware of 

191 



8rj)e J&ottvs of JLitt 

the cessation of my devoted endeavours, nor 
missed my customary offerings at all. To 
me, however, the time has seemed heavy and 
interminable, and I have only borne it, I am 
sorry to admit, with grievous vexation and 
a rebellious heart. It has been a bitter and 
profitless year of estrangement. Had I felt 
that it was the result of your displeasure, 
that you had purposely withdrawn your 
favour from me, that I was being chastised 
like a loved but erring child in need of 
discipline, I think I could have endured the 
separation, the lonesomeness, the defeat, with 
a comparatively equal mind. But that cir- 
cumstances and conditions alone should have 
been the cause of this apparent neglect, is 
the fact that makes my unhappiness so 
sombre and sincere. Our life, it seems, is 
never what we will, but always a hurried 
compromise with the inexorable drift of 
events, and we go forward through time and 
the tangle of affairs as a canoe goes upward 
through the headlong brawling rapids of a 

192 



cue iftetpartri^ of ^ottvp 

stream to the far-lying uncertain reaches of 
success between the meadows of content- 
ment. 

You who live constantly in the quiet open 
light of ideals, like a dweller among lofty 
mountains where the air is always serene, 
very likely forget sometimes how it must 
fare with unfortunate mortals on the earth, 
forced to snatch a perilous livelihood in the 
bewildering hubbub of modern times. With 
your radiant beauty, your perennial youth, 
your unconquerable joyousness, your calm 
and happy wisdom, I dare say it has escaped 
your notice that the world has grown old 
since the golden age of Hellas, when Mar- 
syas piped from the riverside and Pan 
responded from the rugged hills. That 
was before the blight of modernity, " the 
strange disease called modern life," had 
fallen upon men. Life was lived in many 
ways more sanely then than now, even 
though the range of knowledge was less 
unlimited than ours. The people of those 

193 



JClfte ^ottvs of atfe 

days surpassed us in the fortunate conduct 
of their lives, — in securing a just poise of 
existence, in making all their endeavours 
subserve the great purpose of happiness. 
They knew well that there is one thing more 
important than to be strenuous, and that is 
to be glad. It is true we have far out- 
stripped them in conquering the forces of 
the earth and the secrets of science. Our 
resources of wealth and knowledge are truly 
almost incredible; and yet we seem almost 
powerless to convert them into enjoyment; 
and our modern world lies in a vast turmoil 
of excitement, battle, and doubt, beneath un- 
lifting clouds of hesitation and dismay. 
We wear out our hearts and brains in the 
ceaseless fret of affairs, and grow gray be- 
fore our time; yet seldom reach the goal of 
all ambition, — one simple hour of joy. 

This sorry plight of the world, I say, you 
may never have observed. For when you 
do come among men, and visit any mortal 
with the inspiration of your gracious pres- 

194 



ence, he is at once transfigured. He is no 
longer one of the average company of 
humans, but a radiant being, possessed and 
gay, and even wise. So that to you, behold- 
ing his happiness, it must seem that all men 
are happy, that the earth is immortally fair, 
and that the life of mortals has suffered no 
change, no deterioration, as the centuries 
have gone by. 

I am sure that is true in our own case. 
When I first loved you, it was not even 
necessary that my sentiment should be re- 
turned, since I was filled with it as a lamp 
is filled with flame, and all the dark of the 
room is illumined even though no watcher is 
by. You did not need to favour me; my 
own infatuation was enough to change the 
face of nature; and when I approached your 
shrine with my first offerings and supplica- 
tions, so precious in their origin, so trivial 
in themselves, you must have beheld a mortal 
almost transfigured by one touch of the 
great passion which your piercing beauty 

195 



STfje J&ottvp of aife 

arouses. Doubtless in me, as in so many be- 
fore me, you took the exception for the 
average, and judged the whole world was 
still young. I thought it so myself. 

Alas, that was not the whole truth! For 
while the elation of love made weariness 
seem a fable, and the age of the universe 
a myth, the actual signs of failure and un- 
happiness were abroad, had we but had eyes 
to perceive them, sprung from seeds of 
sorrow and decrepitude sown long ago. 
But we were as blind as crazy happy lovers 
always are, and never guessed that the 
actual world could be different from our 
iridescent vision, or that people could actu- 
ally be tainted with anxiety and terror and 
care. 

It did not matter to me then. It does not 
matter to you now. In your immortal life, 
dear angel of joy, there is neither age nor 
care nor the shadow of grief. Others will 
come to you, in the long, unfailing years, 
with songs as fresh and a thousand times 

196 



more worthy than mine, and win your im- 
mortal love with the exigency of their mor- 
tal needs. Yet few will come beneath your 
spell with a rapture more genuine, a joy 
more unquestioning, than carried me away 
in those youthful perished summers of the 
North. How could I know, then, the truth 
of the world, being so full of the truth of 
your unworldliness? 

Did it, indeed, seem to you in those old 
days, when I haunted your door with all the 
folly of a mortal lover, all the fervour of an 
immortal, that the whole earth was fervent 
and bewitched, — a lovely illimitable gar- 
den of dalliance and dream? Let me tell 
you it is only when we mortals are in love 
that we share in your divinity, only while we 
are under the domination of your inspired 
ideals of tenderness and beauty, that we put 
ofiP for a time many unlovely traits. In this 
life we lead upon earth, I must remind you, 
there are pitiful sorrows, blighting disap- 
pointments, senseless accidents, blunders, dis- 

197 



JCiit J^ottvs of affe 

cases, annihilations, and countless forms of 
envy, hatred, malice, cruelty, and greed. 
We live and strive and have our being in 
ways too ghastly and revolting for you to 
imagine. We do so, I suppose, because of 
those unlovely characteristics we have de- 
rived from our inhuman ancestry, an inherit- 
ance from worse than barbarous times, the 
vast chaotic aeons of tooth and claw; and 
we are willing to continue doing so, I sup- 
pose, because our faith in our better instincts, 
our intuitions derived from beings like your- 
self, is so timid as yet, so poor and feeble 
and frail. In war we strew the lovely earth 
with ruin and with death, struggling among 
ourselves for the possession of lands, as 
children struggle and push one another in 
the face for the possession of an apple or a 
candy dog. In peace, throughout all the 
activities of modern life, our behaviour is 
even worse, being more underhand and 
mean; we follow a code, our business code, 
whose iniquities are no less ruthless and vile, 

198 



though more devious and concealed than 
the flagrant cruelties of the code of war. 
These things are so common among us 
that they cause no remark. To you, how- 
ever, should you contemplate them, they 
would appear unbelievable in their folly. 
Even to those who have once come within 
the sway of your pure intelligence, their 
enormity seems appalling. 

Indeed, when any mortal has ever felt the 
benediction of your spiritual influence, to 
however small a degree, and known the love 
of beauty and the desire for truth which your 
friendship always instils, he can never again 
be quite insensible to the dangerous insanity 
and animosity of his fellows, but must 
always tread warily through life, fearful 
that at any moment the chimera of human 
perversity may turn and destroy him. So 
that to have been a devotee of your innocent 
cult in his youth is not the best preparation 
a man can have for success, as the world 
reckons success, since it gives him a tinge 

199 



ffHe J^ottvp of mu 

of 'idealism that must always afterward 
colour his thoughts and deflect his judgment. 
A man who has loved poetry when he was 
young, will not be likely, when he grows 
up, to love money with that absorbing single- 
ness of heart which alone can establish his 
position among our respectable church- 
members. 

For the God of the world is a jealous God, 
and tolerates no divided allegiance in his 
worshippers. To those who wear his badge, 
and toil without ceasing to gather riches in 
his name, he grants many and great rewards, 
— lands, houses, raiment, rich foods, horses, 
automobiles, railroads, senatorships, divi- 
dends, and cushioned seats in his own fash- 
ionable houses, where dreary ministers arise 
to promulgate the monstrous cant of a false 
Christianity. But to those who have ever 
in the rashness of youth dared to scorn the 
enticements of Mammon, and have turned 
their faces to you in a credulous search for 
goodness, the God of this world is relentless. 

200 



You will know, however, dear Beauty, 
that while I mock with sincerity, I remain 
without bitterness. If you cannot compre- 
hend the perplexity of living the poetic life 
in a world so topsyturvy as men's inordinate 
greed has made it, you can certainly under- 
stand the indifference to small adversities 
which all your followers must feel. Passing, 
in the public eye, for slightly demented 
creatures, harmless enthusiasts, impractical 
visionaries, they are content with immunity, 
if only it may be allowed them, and happy 
enough with the inward irridiation which 
the joy of your companionship brings. Un- 
burdened by the distractions of worldly 
eminence, they are free to behold the pageant 
of life not only without envy but with 
sympathy and sometimes with understand- 
ing. Moreover, vituperation mends no mis- 
takes. 

To those who have never known you it 
must be a constant source of wonder what 
the rewards of poetry can be to induce any 

20I 



sane person to give it even the devotion of a 
day. That one could follow it for a life- 
time must seem like the wildest lunacy. 
Indeed, there are times, hours of dreariness 
and dejection, in which for some cause or 
other you appear to have deserted me, when 
I almost share that popular incredulity, and 
myself indulge in the blasphemy of doubt. 
Many expensive pleasures in which people 
find enjoyment, or at least diversion, I can 
readily forego; they seem to me a very dull 
way of killing time; but when it comes to 
the actual pinch of necessity, — when I 
have had to pawn my cuff-links for a car- 
fare, or when I have not had the price of a 
smoke in my pocket, I confess to you, I have 
been filled with something more acrid than 
" the ignoble melancholy of pecuniary em- 
barrassment." A smouldering fury of resent- 
ment consumes my fastidious soul on such 
occasions; even the humourous incongruity 
of the occasion fails to rouse me; and I 
begin to comprehend that blundering in- 

202 



stinct for revolution which makes savages 
in the midst of civilization. 

I am afraid in this regard I have not the 
fine superiority to circumstance which was 
so conspicuous a trait in a vanished comrade 
of mine, who could remain imperturbable un- 
der the petty annoyances of low finance. He 
seemed to perceive that the necessity was 
a matter of course, and that it was enough 
to be a poet without wanting to be a million- 
aire as well. I have always admired that 
stable courage in him, which could accept 
things as they are, and never fretted over the 
fact that the rewards of poetry and the 
rewards of the world are different and not 
always convertible. You may wait, I fear, 
for several generations before you find 
another poet who will devote himself more 
whole-heartedly to your service, and will 
accept the conditions of life with so wise a 
resignation as he habitually showed, with so 
unspoiled a temper, and a disposition so un- 



203 



8rtie l&ottvs of %ift 

embittered by the tedious, discouraging 
career of an artist in letters. 

It is not always a comfortable road that 
your devotees have to follow. Though it 
is wide enough and easy to trace, with joys 
of a rare sort here and there, it has many 
solitary stretches barren of consolation. At 
its outset there is an enticing glamour hang- 
ing over it, very alluring to the strong and 
young, but, in sober truth, few roads require 
more resolution in the traveller. It is so easy 
to set out for your fabled and dazzling 
shrine; all that the adventurer needs is a 
pencil and pad and a vacant afternoon. 
With this slight equipment, the immemorial 
daring of his tribe tells him, he can conquer 
fame and carry your glory in triumph above 
the crowd. But after a few years upon the 
way, he realizes that all he has are the pad 
(slightly diminished), the pencil (a little 
worn down), and the vacant afternoon 
(radiant still, but seemingly not so long as 
it used to be) ; and your shining temple as 

204 



CJl^ Xletuattri^ of Jloettff 

far away as ever. Meanwhile the cakes and 
ale have not been overabundant, and hd is 
lucky if he has a clear conscience and sound 
courage to show after his many days of dusty 
wayfaring. 

Nearly twenty years ago now, a young 
man at Harvard began to give his days to 
the cultivation of poetry, infatuated by the 
glamour of your fame and beauty, and tasted 
the first-fruits of ambition when a string 
of his verses appeared in The Atlantic, your 
favourite periodical. Since then he has had 
little other occupation than to do your will 
and preach your worship in the world. One 
would suppose that in that time he might 
have achieved a position of some substance 
and security, such as men in other profes- 
sions attain in half the time. Such is hardly 
the case, however. Only a few months ago, 
after being out of town for the summer, he 
called at the office of that friend and pro- 
tector of many of your votaries, the inestima- 
ble Runnels, to inquire how his manuscripts 

205 



had fared in his absence in their rounds of 
the editorial rooms. 

" Well," said Runnels, " here is one poem 
that has been to — let me see — one, two, 
three, four, seventeen places. Here is an- 
other that has been to twenty-three. And 
here is a third one that has come back from 
twenty-nine editorial visits. I think perhaps 
you had better take them yourself, and see 
what you can do with them." 

Not a very encouraging prospect! Yet I 
can never repine. The compensation of 
having known your companionship out- 
weighs with me all other considerations. 
Only, I would not have any one fancy that 
your service, perfect freedom though it is, 
is also a perfect picnic. If any young gentle- 
man is bent on becoming the poet of the 
future, the position is open, the applicants 
are few, but his credit at the bank of pa- 
tience must be unlimited, for he will have 
to draw on it heavily and often. 

The poet's relation to the world is not very 
206 



often a happy one, unless, like our friend 
Horace, he is blessed with a joyous pene- 
trating interest in the lighter side of society. 
Even that delightful Roman would have 
fared ill, I dare say, had it not been for the 
comfortable estate of Maecenas. But we 
have come far away from those times; the 
artist has grown proud of his vocation under 
the growth of democracy, and is not to be 
patronized any more. I cannot say that I 
blame him. And yet, if you look at the fine 
arts as a whole, you perceive that to be free 
and beautiful they must be independent of 
the market to some extent. Just how that is 
to be done, each artist has to determine for 
himself, and in the very solving of the diffi- 
culty he establishes his kinship with this 
struggling world of men, and gains, I must 
believe, strength and understanding in the 
contest, — if it be not too hopeless and too 
long. 

There has lately been a good deal of dis- 
cussion of a possible decline in the taste for 

207 



8Ciie ^ottts oC atfe 

poetry. Whether or not poetry is less widely 
read than it used to be, is difficult to say. I 
notice one thing, however, which gives me 
grave fears for the supremacy in which 
high poetry was once held. There are no 
old poets any more, no men of assured genius 
and achievement continuing their labours 
with unabated zeal. Scores begin their am- 
bitious careers as your followers ; almost none 
persist in their calling beyond early middle 
life, no matter how authentic their inspira- 
tion may have seemed. Men, if I may name 
them, like Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Dobson, Mr. 
Lang, Mr. Stedman, Mr. Gosse, — why do 
they pipe no longer in your honour? Did 
they not love your art? Have they not 
proved themselves genuine and worthy up- 
holders of your best traditions? Yes, indeed! 
How comes it, then, that they are silent? 
The time was when every year or two would 
see a new volume of poems from one of them 
or another, yet now they seem to belong to an 
age that is past. It is not that they are old, 

208 



cut IlfUiartri^ of It^ottvs 

it is not that their work was ephemeral; 
there must be some other reason for the hush 
that has fallen upon them. Our elders, 
Whitman, Emerson, Tennyson, Browning, 
Whittier, Morris, Longfellow, and the rest, 
all grew old in the delightful service of 
poetry, courageous and productive to the 
last. Only one quitted your service long 
before the term of life was closed for him, 
— one of the most lovely and sincere of mor- 
tals, one of the best of poets. While still 
a young man, the inflexible necessity of for- 
tune compelled Arnold to abandon his true 
vocation, and devote himself, in his fine 
sedulous way, to more immediate and prosaic 
duties. His heart, we all must believe, was 
always yours, but the unavoidable demands 
of the world permitted him no respite to fol- 
low his bent. And though the example of 
his cheerful, courageous life remains to us, 
the fate which befell his poetic career seems 
to me no less pitiful than the premature 
death of Shelley or of Keats. Had he been 

209 



Srtie J&ottvs of ILlft 

permitted to give his whole life to poetry, 
who can say what beautiful masterpieces 
might not have been added to the English 
tongue? 

And in our own day I suspect that the 
exigent call of the world is growing more 
and more imperative; its conditions more 
and more rigorous; and that it is becoming 
yearly more difficult for the artist in ideals 
to maintain his independence, — to fight for 
standing-room and breathing-space, — while 
he pursues his exacting craft. I suspect that 
if a number of living poets could be ques- 
tioned, it would be found that they have 
allowed their voices to become silent, not 
from any failure of loyalty toward yourself, 
but simply from the increasing difficulty, not 
to say indifference, of the times. What we 
all recognize as the prevalent complexity 
and turmoil and distraction of life to-day, 
with its multitudinous exactions, puts an 
overwhelming burden upon every citizen, 
and permits of almost no devotion to lei- 

2IO 



surely intellectual occupations. The sky of 
being is no longer radiant, but overcast as 
with a cloud of discouragement and depres- 
sion, and we are surrounded with an atmos- 
phere in which joyous creative spontaneity 
is all but impossible. The bounding vigour 
of youth may support it for a time, but the 
grim passage of leaden days will wear out 
the strongest heart at last, and leave the 
spirit no more elasticity for lofty enter- 
prise. 

Say what we will in defence of the times, 
there is no denying their vigour, their practi- 
cality, their insensitiveness to beauty, and 
the sad contempt of most people for all 
that poetry means. In a recent discussion 
of this subject, a sturdy follower of yours 
has said the final word, " A scarecrow adver- 
tisement on our crowded streets is rated of 
more worth than a copy of the Winged 
Victory. Otherwise, the victory would be 
there." 

There is no answer to that argument. 

211 



Kfit ^oetts of mu 

Again, I read only last evening this aston- 
ishing sentence at the opening of an article 
by a Japanese nobleman on ^' The Heart of 
the Mikado," " Fortunately for his people, 
the emperor is a poet." Fancy any one in 
this country saying in a serious essay, " For- 
tunately for the United States, Mr. John 
Hay was a poet." It was something in him 
the public wished to forget or condone, noth- 
ing to be proud of. 

In all this, dear, happy Muse, am I quite 
mistaken? Is it because we are weaklings 
that we can find no longer the opportunity 
for song, and your altar is neglected? I 
write to you with tumultuous feelings of 
regret, not to excuse my growing negligence 
of you, but to explain it. However sad you 
may feel at our parting, my own sorrow is 
still greater. To you it may seem only the 
breaking of one more fair promise, but to me 
it is the frustration of kingly hopes. 

Stripped of prevarication, it comes to 
this; I am in debt to the world. During 

212 



the years spent in your service, I have had 
the workman's three meals a day; if I have 
not been elegantly dressed, I have certainly 
been decently clothed most of the time; and 
if I have had neither horse nor house to call 
my own, I have at least not slept in squalor. 
If such modest equipment as I have enjoyed 
could still be honestly maintained, all would 
be very well indeed. But as a matter of 
fact, my actual and unavoidable account with 
society shows a considerable balance on the 
wrong side of the book, with a tendency to 
increase rather than to diminish with the 
passing years. This, of course, we can 
neither of us afford to tolerate. We who 
profess to set so much store by the finer 
ideals, can hardly shirk the most ordinary 
demands of fair play in the daily conduct 
of affairs. 

When I tell you, therefore, that I must 
leave you, and turn my attention to the 
practical business of discharging my debts, 
I feel sure you will approve my cause, even 

213 



though It should seem to be a slight to your- 
self in the eyes of outsiders. People have 
been lenient with me long enough ; no doubt 
on your account. But there is a limit to 
human patience, and a point beyond which 
good nature ought not to be strained. I 
must not bring you into discredit, while 
professedly attempting to forward your 
cause. You have had many followers, whose 
lives were sadly at variance with those ideals 
of lovely and happy existence of which 
you perpetually dream. Even if I could 
rival such predecessors in achievement, the 
undertaking would still be questionable at 
such a cost. And I have no right to count 
on any such success. Your worship must be 
kept free from disrepute and your name 
from disrespect, at all hazards. 

You see, then, the drift of my apology, 
the very good reason for my apparent aban- 
donment of your favour and your cause. 
And I trust to your large wisdom for ample 
forgiveness, if for the future I transfer much 

214 



of my labour and my allegiance to your less 
distinguished but more opulent sister, the 
muse of prose. 

Still I linger over the page. I cannot 
bear to bid you farewell. Like a lover 
parting from the woman he loves, my heart 
is torn by regrets, and my mind at moments 
almost wrecked by despair. Just as I have 
begun to master the difficult technique of 
your art, just as you have begun to im- 
part to me the most important revelations, 
I must resign the absorbing and delightful 
task of being your amanuensis, and leave 
you, perhaps never to return. As a novice 
I came to you in joyousness of enthusiasm, 
and now I can imagine no happier for- 
tune than to be allowed to continue in 
the enjoyment of your teaching, whose rea- 
son and beauty I was just beginning to 
comprehend. I abandon your way with 
grief, but there is no alternative. 

Good-bye once more, dear soul of perfect 
utterance, whom I have loved so well, — 

215 



spirit of imperishable beauty! I turn from 
the hearth where we have been happy to- 
gether, where you have often conversed with 
such gaiety and wisdom. Henceforth the 
long hours must be given to the piety of 
profitable toil. For your sake, and to pro- 
tect our threshold from profanation, I must 
be prepared to answer the dreaded knock at 
the door, which I have come to recognize 
as the inescapable summons or the peremp- 
tory dun. 

Do you think I would be pitied? Not I, 
dear heart. I speak of trivial annoyances, 
the mere outward daily fret of life which 
may conquer human strength, but cannot 
subdue the soul. I refer to the rewards of 
poetry, not the compensation of the poet. 
Not all the rewards of Philistia are equal 
to his true and immaterial recompense. 
There is no arithmetic to tell, no symbol 
to express, the happiness you have given me, 
the serenity of spirit you have taught me to 
prize, and which no adversity can take away. 

216 



Ci^eerful tiesstmbm 



A FRIEND of mine, with a ready and plenti- 
ful wit, discriminated between two persons 
of his acquaintance by saying that one was a 
cheerful pessimist and the other a tearful 
optimist. The distinction is as suggestive 
as it is delightful, and comes near to divid- 
ing the world in two. The incongruous 
blending of sad and gay in both classes lends 
the universal application to the saying — 
makes it human and genuine. " Thank God, 
the worst has happened," says a Chinese 
proverb, pessimistic, but game to the last. 
" Though he slay me, yet will I trust in 
him," says the tearful optimist, Job. Here 
I am believing everything is just as bad as 
it can be, and yet with a fine indestructible 

217 



cut ^ottvp of mtt 

core of valour still remaining; and there you 
are, convinced of the excellence of the earth, 
protesting the unalterable prevalence of law 
and order, yet touched with the mouldy 
blight of melancholy. 

After all, it is only a difference in the 
angle of vision. From your side of the fence 
it is a green world touched with blue; from 
my side it is a blue world shading into 
green. And all on account of an hour's 
difference in our birth. For you the stars 
stood in one position at the time of your 
terrestrial advent; for me they had ranged 
themselves in a new order. But for both of 
us the same omnipotent influences of the 
planets and the suns, the same fortune to 
inherit from, though you have your portion 
and I have mine. We float together in a 
tide of being in the grasp of the same great 
wind, in the pull of the same great moon. 
On the perilous, breathless crest of a wave 
you call yourself an optimist — with your 
heart in your mouth; I call myself a pessi- 

218 



mist, seeing nothing but a wall of water 
towering overhead as I gasp in the trough 
of a sea. In a moment we change places. 
But I have the advantage of you in this, that 
I can dive from trough to trough, while you 
cannot skip from crest to crest. You must 
wallow down the sliding declivity of your 
unstable mountain of vision, to be cast up 
again for another momentary prospect. Very 
well, I take your word for the glorious sea 
view; meanwhile I prefer the equable tenor 
of my mid-sea way, engulfed at times, but 
avoiding your sickening undulations — a 
Titanic dawdling for which I have no 
stomach. 

Cheerful pessimism is the creed of com- 
edy. By comedy one does not mean, of 
course, the cheap buffoonery which parades 
before us falsely in the name of the kindly 
muse. For Comedy is the wisest of all the 
divine sisters, and, while she enjoys the 
folly of others, she is herself sane and free. 
It is she who saves us from our own fatuity, 

219 



sriie ^ottva of Hffe 

mistress of so many great joy-givers, from 
Chaucer and Shakespeare to Browning and 
Robert Louis Stevenson. Not only is so 
much great poetry under her care, but all 
the entertaining stories and pictures of social 
humanity, from Fielding and Hogarth to 
Du Maurier and Mr. Meredith. 

Comedy not only makes us laugh, she 
makes us see; while her solemn sister 
Tragedy has a way of blinding the sight 
and distorting our vision with fear. Tragedy 
makes us start with terror, while Comedy 
only wrinkles the corners of the eyes. Trag- 
edy makes us lean and spectacular and un- 
companionable, while Comedy makes us good 
comrades, passes the longest day with pleas- 
antry, and puts us to bed without a regret. 
Nay, nay. Tragedy, thou tearful optimist, I 
will none of thy lofty icebergian platitudes 
and sententious aspirations. But I will fol- 
low our beloved Comedy, cheery, ironical, 
pessimistic, to the turning of the street. I 
had almost said to the ends of the earth, but 

220 



that would be to lapse into the tragic phrase 1 
Even in Comedy's back there is something 
irresistibly alluring, and to meet her once 
face to face is to be her adoring slave for 
life. But imperial Tragedy, let who will 
gaze upon that awful mien, or follow that 
ceremonious tread 1 Here, at least, is one 
poor child of earth who pulls down his 
window-shade as he sees her approaching. 
Knock at some less lowly door, I pray, O 
queen; for to thy fearsome summons I am 
not at home. But comely Comedy may enter 
when she will, and stay as long as the law 
allows. To her I say: 

** There is no lock for thee. 
Each door awaits thy hand 1 *' 

As Mr. Aldrich has said with his fine 
grace, — 

*' Some Melpomene woo, 

Some hold Clio the nearest ; 
You, sweet Comedy — you 

Were ever sweetest and dearest ! " 

And for the pursuit of the ideal, the crea- 
tive instinct, the happy moment of inspira- 

221 



sri^e J&ottvs of Hffe 

tion, I am not persuaded that any better 
mood than that of cheerful pessimism has 
been found. Certainly if we are to be 
touched by the things of art, if our minds 
are to be convinced and our emotions en- 
listed, it must be — it can only be — by one 
who has plumbed the deepest abyss. And 
yet, just as certainly, will he fail to hold us, 
if he has not brought to light, like a diver 
from the sea, some pearl of great price, some 
talisman of joy. Your optimism is too apt 
to have a tearful tinge. Let me be never so 
stoutly settled in the optimistic faith, there 
still survives and recurs at times the ines- 
capable sorrow of the world. And then, of 
course, disappointment comes to add its 
drop of bitterness. Whereas our brothers 
who hoped for nothing, had the glad sur- 
prise of discovering shreds of happiness and 
vestiges of good at every turn. 

Taken all in all, you would have a long 
argument in proving to me the creed of the 



222 



cheerful pessimist is the worst in the world. 
And though she deny me with every breath, 
I shall still cleave to Comedy, mistress of the 
heart ot man. 



223 



Ma^ttt& of ti^t WotXti 



You may say of conduct, it is never purely 
ethical, but has always elements of the 
aesthetic as well. What we do is of great 
importance in this difficult world; but how 
we do it is of quite as much importance. 
It is not enough to do good; we must do 
good gracefully, so that while righteousness 
is served, beauty may be served also. For 
the end of each is perfection, and total per- 
fection must include what is fair as well 
as what is noble. The appearance of the 
act, as well as the gist of the action, is always 
to be counted. 

More than that, it is always to be asked 
whether a line of conduct is wise, whether 

224 



^uuttvn of tf^t WLovVf 

it is in conformity with the requirements of 
the economy of the world and the conserva- 
tion of life. However well meaning, how- 
ever graceful we may be, we may still work 
havoc rather than assistance among our fel- 
lows, if we take no care to act thoughtfully, 
wisely, judiciously. 

So many lives are stunted and hampered, 
and their effect almost nullified, for lack of 
consideration in this regard! How devotedly, 
how unreservedly, with what untold ardour 
and self-denial, the saints of the earth in 
the long march of ages have given them- 
selves without stint to the cause of good! 
Poverty, hardship, hunger and cold, perils 
and buffets, insult and contempt and neglect, 
sickness and travel, and unrequited labour, — 
all these they have endured with cheerful pa- 
tience or rugged fortitude, that the right 
might at length prevail, and the consuming 
spirit within them behold the triumph of 
the cause which enlisted their mighty hearts. 
Whatever their creed or nation or sect or 

225 



age, they have been called by common con- 
sent the sons of God, and credited with al- 
most more than human excellence. Builders 
of churches, founders of religions, carrying 
some new tidings of hope into thronging 
cities of eager men, or spreading the conso- 
lations of their gospel abroad to the far 
corners of the earth, they have earned a 
universal respect, a name for piety, and 
imperishable glory, as men fancy, in a king- 
dom not of this world. They were seekers 
of perfection, and perfection to them meant 
the supreme dominance of goodness, the 
victory of righteousness over evil. 

Yet they were not alone. Others, too, 
have dreamed of perfection, — the dreamers 
who beheld far off the ideal of universal 
culture, and the dreamers who brooded on 
the creation of flawless beauty, — the dream- 
ers who longed to make life intelligible, and 
the dreamers who longed to make it lovely, 
— the scholars and the artists. The saint, 
the scholar, the artist, — these three be- 

226 



JHaf^tet!^ of tJie SJKotW 

tween them divide the dominion of the 
world. The ambition of the artist, like that 
of his brother the saint, has been prosecuted 
with zeal and courage and much enduring 
toil. Yet his aim is somewhat different. To 
the one life is an opportunity for action, for 
influencing the course of events, and for 
ameliorating the condition of temporal and 
eternal affairs; to the other it offers the 
plastic media of a radiant fleeting universe, 
to be moulded and repatterned after his 
own will into shapes more beautiful than 
the eye has yet beheld. To the one the out- 
ward world, with all its entrancing variety 
and loveliness, appeals with a delirious en- 
thralment; to the other the inward universe 
is made clear in ordered excellence and 
majesty. The one capital mistake of either 
saint or scholar or artist lies solely in this, 
that he fails to remember the importance of 
the others; yet the three are equal, and the 
work of each is of equal use to the world, — 
more than that, it is of equal dignity and 

227 



equally essential to the furtherance of the 
cause of man's perfection. 

In that long future to which the soul looks 
forward, the day will come when we shall 
awake as from a restless dream, and perceive 
the mistake of our distracted endeavour. 
We shall see clearly that not in the pre- 
dominance of rarefied spirituality, nor in the 
supremacy of inflexible reason, does man's 
normal perfection reside, any more than 
in the vexatious tyranny of the flesh. It 
will be borne in upon us that an equal bal- 
ance of these contending forces, brought to 
fine poise in each personality, is the only true 
type of character after which we should 
strive. The terrible waste of energy we now 
suffer in the suicidal friction of varying 
ideals, will be apparent; and we shall say 
to ourselves, " What folly has been ours, to 
be thus constantly at strife! How foolish 
to have striven to overcome the flesh, to 
mortify our goodly beauty and our strength! 



228 



IWastttrs of tJ)e WiovVf 

How absurd to suppose we could ever di- 
vorce ourselves from ourselves!" 

For in truth our differing natures are but 
different phases of one indivisible nature. 
If man cannot live by bread alone, neither 
can he live by prayer alone, nor by taking 
thought alone. It was natural that in the 
beginnings of self-consciousness, sustenance 
and the satisfying of bodily needs should 
seem the only necessity. It was natural, 
too, that as man became aware of the pleas- 
ures of the mind, other needs should seem 
to him more worthy than those of the body. 
Just as naturally will spread the glad real- 
ization of the newer, larger ideal of perfect 
manhood, which gives free play to each 
normal instinct, and allows an equal culture 
for the three natures so strangely brought 
to focus in the clay-built structure we in- 
habit. 

Nay, more than that, it will be revealed 
to us, gradually and like a joyous gospel, 
that in following this new standard of normal 

229 



culture, we are not only giving vent to the 
varying and seemingly opposed powers we 
possess, but that the cultivating of one im- 
plies the growth of all. We shall see how 
essential health is, not only to happiness, but 
to righteousness and clear thinking also, — 
how every service rendered this perishable 
tenement makes for clarity of mind and 
sweetness of temper, — and how we can 
never foster one faculty without bettering 
our whole being, nor ever approach entire 
excellence while any need, whether of mind 
or body or spirit, remains ruthlessly neg- 
lected. 

To such a code the intellectual life alone 
can never seem of paramount importance; 
but the discovery of truth must be followed 
by actual accomplishment. Nor will accom- 
plishment suffice without grace. To con- 
sider wisely is of the first importance; nor 
is it less important to deal justly and honestly 
with our fellows. The imperative necessity 
for making life comely and attractive, how- 

230 



JWastetfii of tJie WiovVIt 

ever, is hardly recognized as of equal merit. 
Yet beauty in itself is only another kind of 
virtue, and one test of noble conduct is fair 
seeming. It is, indeed, possible to be good, 
to be scrupulous, to be humane, to be kindly, 
while giving scant attention to the figure we 
cut in the world. This is a common ideal; 
we all know people of careless, unlovely 
habits, whom we still declare to be the salt of 
the earth. But why should our tone be 
apologetic? Why should they content them- 
selves with their native goodness, and make 
no effort to be pleasing as well? It is surely 
only a warped and stunted virtue which 
resides in frowsy asceticism; just as all 
beauty must be perishable and touched with 
blight, which does not embody a generous 
moral essence. To give one's self to good 
deeds, and still care nothing for the graces 
of living, is to rob those very deeds of half 
their power; while to attempt to cultivate 
grace, without sincerity and meaning and 
impulse, is equally futile. The world will 

231 



not long be deceived by either faulty con- 
ception of the whole duty of man. For we 
must remember that the universe is normal, 
and proceeds on normal laws. It is only our 
fragmentary ideas that are at fault, and all 
our unhappiness comes from attempting to 
live according to wrong notions. In the end, 
in the long run, however, life must be made 
square with ideals, and the false and unlovely 
be pared away. 

To govern our daily life according to right 
principles, then, is our chief concern, if you 
will ; but to govern it according to the pref- 
erences of taste, concerns us also. We are to 
make our conduct not only exemplary, but 
fair and pleasing, so that our friends may 
think us charming as well as scrupulous. 
These passing days are a tissue of appear- 
ances to be woven into patterns of ugliness 
or beauty beneath our hands. No time is 
too precious to spend, no detail too small to 
be considered, in bringing the fabric of life, 
as it passes through our fingers, ever nearer 

122 



munitvn of tJie fflsaotllf 

and nearer to some preconceived image of 
beauty. The good of all ages who have 
been imbued with a passion for righteous- 
ness, have never hesitated to spend them- 
selves generously, for the cause they loved, 
the advancement of goodness; nor should 
those who care for what is beautiful ever 
hesitate to give themselves as liberally to 
make beauty prevail in the world. They 
should once for all assure themselves of the 
great and abiding worthiness of their cause, 
also, knowing it of equal dignity with the 
cause of righteousness. It is not less hon- 
ourable to work than to pray. The only 
dishonour is in slovenliness and faintness 
of heart; for when we aspire we must aspire 
with all our might, and when we work we 
must work with infinite patience and infinite 
care, so that the greatest wish is not too 
large for the fluttering soul, nor the smallest 
detail too insignificant for attention. There 
is no other road to perfection. 

If you observe the masters in any of the 
233 



8Ciie 31Poett» of atfe 

arts, or in any of the professions, or in any 
business, you will find that they work with- 
out hurry, without fret, with an equal regard 
for great things and small. They know 
proportion, indeed, but they know, too, how 
fine a balance exists between success and 
failure, and how small a trifle may mar the 
issue of an undertaking. 

I often used to marvel at the endless pains 
some people would take over the small 
concerns of life, the hanging of a picture, 
the trimming of a bonnet, or the number of 
buttons on a coat; but I have come to see 
that success depends on trifles, and that 
the right adjustment of the smallest detail 
of living is quite as important as the sequence 
of syllables in a memorable lyric or the 
proximity of colours in some splendid paint- 
ing. Moreover, the pleasure of the average 
man in all he does may be just as keen as 
the artist's delight in his work. Every one 
of us may become an artist in the conduct 
of life, if he will turn his mind to it, culti- 

234 



vating his taste, and, above all, using patient 
care. And we shall come to know a satis- 
faction in so doing; for all things done well 
have this great recompense, whatever they 
cost in time and labour, — they give us an 
imperishable delight which can never spring 
from hurried or slighted tasks. 

Notice the difference between men in this 
matter, how easily some seem to live, and 
with how much difficulty others go about 
their business. Here is one who is never 
hurried, never ill-natured, never anxious, 
accomplishing much; while there is an- 
other who frets and toils and complains and 
never has a moment's leisure, yet accom- 
plishes nothing. It is largely a matter of 
art, the art of living. The first has poise, 
the second has not. The first has the serene 
temperament and happy spirit of an artist, 
while his fellow has only the fussy nervous- 
ness of a dabster. The first would undertake 
vast affairs with a light heart, and carry 



235 



8rj)e ^ottvs of atte 

them through without friction; the second 
would worry over the merest trifle, and spend 
all his energy in hesitation, timidity, and 
indecision. 



236 



SCjje ©oetrg t>f Co- 



mom^H^ 



Have we not reason enough to believe that 
the poetry of to-morrow will be greater than 
the poetry of to-day, simply because we be- 
lieve that to-day is greater than yesterday? 

In the elder days the house of knowledge 
was narrow and low; and art was no more 
than the telling of a tale whose beginning 
was " Once upon a time," and its ending, 
" lived happy ever after." And the religion 
of that house was mixed with terror. But 
there came a change. The restless children 
of that house, possessed by a spirit of divine 
discontent, must lift the roof and push out 
the walls. Master Newton, Master Colum- 
bus, Master Galileo, Master Darwin, and 

237 



cue ^oettj? of iLtte 

scores of others, refused to live in the old 
shack where they had been born. It was 
good enough for their fathers, but by no 
means good enough for them. They in- 
tended to have a roomier habitation, cleaner, 
airier, and more modern. They gave us the 
spacious intellectual mansion we occupy to- 
day, and of which we boast. But who knows 
how long it will serve the needs of our 
growing human family? Some day a lad will 
be born who will kick a hole through the 
wall for another window here, tear out a 
place for a doorway there, and push away 
a corner for a new wing in another place. 
If there is no limit to knowledge, there 
can be no limit to art, either, since art con- 
tains our comment on science, and reflects the 
growth of our minds. But this progress, as 
we call it, this expansion, is not even and uni- 
form. It is rather spasmodic and inter- 
mittent. If there have been times when the 
house of knowledge underwent alterations, 
repairs, and extensions, there have been 

238 



CHr ^ottvs of JCo:=ittottroto 

other times when its tenants were content to 
occupy it in squalor and unillumined 
lethargy, receiving it from their sires and 
handing it on to their sons, deteriorated and 
outworn. 

Yet the ages of depression, of faint-heart- 
edness, of despair, are only momentary in 
the history of the world. They are the unfit 
product of time, and in the natural selection 
of eternity they will not survive. We are 
here in spite of sorrow, because there is a 
joy in living common to the oyster and the 
octogenarian, the elephant and the epicure. 
And in our art the joyousness must outweigh 
the sadness. 

It has often been said that the greatest 
poet is he who most perfectly voices the 
trend of emotion of his time. It is claimed 
that the greatness of Arnold, for example, 
is attested most clearly in such poems as 
"A Summer Night," "Dover Beach," 
" The Youth of Man," and other beautiful 
meditations which are full of the grievous 

239 



Sljr J&ottvs of %itt 

sadness of his age and its moral incertitude. 
It is said that his claim upon the future for 
remembrance will lie in his mournful note, 
because a moral sadness was most distinct- 
ive of his own time. 

This is only partly true, however. What 
will the future care for our sentimental 
gloom, our moral doubts, our sad searchings 
of the spirit? It will only care to remember 
in us those traits and traditions that may 
help it to live. Even in the day of doubt, 
the dolorous singer will not be listened to 
by all his contemporaries as gladly as will 
the sturdier minstrel who sets his face against 
the desperate dolefulness about him. Arnold, 
the gracious and wistful abjurer of strife, 
has his place among the great English poets, 
first of all by reason of such faultless crea- 
tions of beauty as '^ Sohrab and Rustum," 
" Tristram and Iseult," " The Neckan," and 
" The Forsaken Merman," and only second- 
arily because of his meditative works. If 
our descendants turn to him hereafter as 

240 



sue jpontff of 5ro=:itiotroto 

one of the eminent poets of the Victorian 
age, and take delight in his poems, they will 
judge him by their own standards; and 
whatever these standards may be, let us 
assure ourselves they will not value the 
utterances of doubt more highly than those 
of joy. 

In front of Chaucer's tomb lie the two 
Sons of Thunder of the Victorian age, 
Browning and Tennyson. We have hon- 
oured Tennyson the more of the two, be- 
cause his speech was easier to comprehend. 
Men hereafter, I am sure, will not honour 
Browning the less, for in time it will seem 
puerile that we could have thought him 
obscure, or could have missed the forthright 
rush and lyric sincerity of his work. If 
Browning shall be more esteemed hereafter 
than Tennyson, one reason will be in his 
abundant and unconquerable faith. Every 
creation that came from his hand taught 
self-reliance, heroism, joy. The race of 
man, alike with the creatures of the field, 

241 



2rt)e ^ottvs ot ILitt 

persists by just those qualities. The great 
poet is he who fosters such positive virtues 
in the heart. 

It was easy to be a poet in the morning 
times of the bold Elizabeth, for then hero- 
ism, joy, and self-reliance were everywhere. 
Conquest and expansion were in the air, and 
triumph and elation in every wind that blew. 
To-day is not less great in discovery, only 
our discoveries are intellectual, and, there- 
fore, less obvious, less stimulating to the 
common imagination. The Elizabethans 
found new continents, and brought back 
reports of unimagined dominions oversea. 
We have made far explorations into the un- 
known, and made faithful reports of them, 
but our home-coming is attended with no 
floating of banners, no sound of drums. It 
is more difficult for us to translate our por- 
tentous news into ringing songs than it was 
for those old discoverers. We deal in treas- 
ures so much less palpable and picturesque 
than they. 

242 



But to-morrow, doubt not, the Captain of 
the Ocean Sea will come, the adjuster and 
revealer of new realms of poetry, who will 
establish us in our new-found heritage. We 
may know him by sight, though that is 
doubtful. We may honour him during his 
lifetime, though that is not likely. His 
work will be done without conceit, yet with 
disregard of the blame of his fellows or their 
approval. In spite of his essential sensitive- 
ness, both adulation and neglect will leave 
him unmoved. Just what his work will be, 
none can say, for he himself, when he shall 
arrive, will not be able to tell the secret of 
his ecstatic vision. The task which his fancy 
shall so cunningly contrive in an idle noon, 
his craftsmanship may finish before sunset; 
yet it will give him no hint of the sudden 
revelation that may be awaiting him within 
the doors of the following dawn. 

Nevertheless, there are some traits of his 
work that we may be sure of. That it will 
be large and glad and valiant is certain; for 

243 



8C8e J&ottvs of mu 

these qualities inhere in the heart of man, not 
to be thrust out by the overthrow of empires, 
nor the founding of republics, nor any trifles 
of history whatsoever. These are the things 
that help the race forward; and anything 
that does not so help it will speedily be for- 
gotten as a surmounted hindrance. But one 
thing is also certain, the poetry of to-morrow 
will not be commonly understood; it will 
appeal only to the children of its own to- 
morrow. And this, not because it will be 
incoherent, but because the true artist speaks 
from within, by an authority which he him- 
self does not always understand; and his new 
word, so potent to himself, is a sealed book 
to most of his troubled fellows. He will 
be gently obstinate about his work, yet none 
will be a more willing learner than he, 
gladly considering even the most casual 
criticism. 

Nature, the beautiful outer world, is all 
that the Invisible found to say before the 
appearance of man. Art is the constant 

244 



slow insistent endeavour of the same power 
to utter itself still more coherently, still 
more intelligently and finally through the 
speech of man. If the only end of art were 
to please and entertain, the critic's task were 
an easy one. But art has always had some- 
thing else to do as well. It must please in 
order to influence, but it has always been 
infused with the desire to influence and con- 
trol. It does not specifically wish to be 
didactic, but it always has at least a covert 
aim, a wish to impose a dominant standard 
of beauty upon life. It will lead and stimu- 
late and suggest. It will content itself with 
the creation of the beautiful, knowing that 
therein lies its best and most effective means 
of aiding the cause of nobility and truth. 
Its influence will be as generous as the sun 
and as impassive as the dew, as abundant as 
the wind, as resistless as the sea, and as subtle 
and sure as the impress of environment upon 
the unborn child. Poetry is a criticism of 
life, indeed, but it is also much more than 

245 



Z'^t J?oett» of aife 

that. It is an aspiration toward a new life, 
the persistent and prescient cry of the soul. 
The poetry of to-morrow will not neces- 
sarily be so unlike the poetry of to-day. 
Perhaps only the knowing will be able to 
recognize it at once. There is no need to 
trouble ourselves about it. The ages are not 
in a hurry. It is only London and New 
York that are in a hurry. In due time a 
greater than Shakespeare will arrive. It is 
foolish to suppose that the Word which was 
in the beginning, and which has spoken 
through lips to men so often in these many 
centuries, will leave us without any testament 
at last. 



246 






It is often claimed that the day for poetry 
is past, that we live in an age of prose, and 
for the future shall get along very well with- 
out the solace which poetry was wont to 
supply. It is a question, however, whether 
those who make this claim have not con- 
ceived far too narrow a scope for poetry, 
and been heedless in thinking what poetry 
really is. They have, one must believe, al- 
lowed themselves to take a very superficial 
and hurried view of human history, and been 
content to accept the current notion of the 
fine arts and their place in our social order. 

What is that notion? How do we at the 
present day think of the fine arts, and of 

247 



Ef^t J&ottvp of ILffe 

poetry in particular? And what place do 
we commonly assign them in our scheme of 
life? Is it not true that we nearly always 
think of them as luxurious occupations, 
forms of harmless amusement or innocuous 
pastimes, to be tolerated perhaps, but yet 
without any real hold on people, and without 
any spontaneous life in public sentiment? 
By the fine arts most of us understand those 
eccentric, if not questionable, pursuits which 
fill our rich houses with pictures and statues, 
and our opera-houses with extravagant music. 
We have come to think of the fine arts as 
foreign to our real life, as esoteric, expen- 
sive, precious, unnecessary, and, therefore, 
to the ordinary mind, just a trifle ridiculous. 
This is not an unjust view of the fine 
arts as they exist among us to-day. They 
live by sufferance, not by right. We do not 
acknowledge their title to a place in modern 
civilization; we accept them as the more 
or less foolish accompaniments of wealth. 
They have no source in popular feeling; 

248 



8Cfie ^tvmuntntt of ^otttp 

they do not spring up irresistibly from our 
social conditions; they command no respect 
save among a small highly educated class. 
Our people at large have no such sense of 
beauty, no such native good taste, as the 
common people of France, for instance, or 
of Japan. 

Yet for all that, admitting the wholly 
anomalous and artificial character of all the 
ancient arts as they survive among us to-day, 
does it follow that they will always be so 
entirely divorced from our social and na- 
tional life? May there not come a time 
when our debased political institutions will 
be purified, when our public morals will be 
elevated, when our industrial and commer- 
cial ethics will come to acknowledge more 
honourable standards? May we not look 
forward to a day when old-fashioned honesty 
will be restored to the code of American 
ideals? May we not hope that our present 
era of unmitigated commercialism, barbarity, 
and greed, is only a passing phase in the story 

249 



of the world, and that time will renew our 
enthusiasm for things of the mind and the 
spirit? To see clearly one's own faults, 
or to mark the shortcomings of one's own 
time, is not to be a pessimist. The pessi- 
mist is one who thinks nothing could be 
better. Admirable, therefore, as our life 
may be to-day, it is our business as sane men 
to look for its flaws and strive to mend them. 
Perfection, not self-gratulation, is the duty 
of mortals. 

Granted, then, that art and poetry are in a 
sorry plight at present, shall we conclude 
that their day is over? While there is even 
such art life as there is, is there not hope? 
Had we not better ask ourselves if we are 
quite sure what art is, and what poetry is, be- 
fore we proceed to set them lightly aside in 
the storeroom of oblivion with other dis- 
carded lumber of time? Our creeds must 
change as knowledge increases, yet faith 
remains of paramount importance. Our 
conception of the universe must change with 

250 



accession of science, yet love of truth only 
becomes more necessary. So, too, we need 
art in all the business of life more impera- 
tively to-day than ever before. For art is a 
manner of doing things, not the thing that is 
done. Art is not the painting itself, but the 
loving fervour, the hard knowledge, the 
skilled industry, that went to make the paint- 
ing. When anything is ill done, it reveals 
a lack of art. And this lack of art may 
spring from lack of sincere devotion in the 
artist himself, or from a lack of wisdom, 
or from a lack of skill. 

And this question of poetry? Is poetry 
a task for children and idlers, a sort of 
Chinese puzzle in words, something to di- 
vert the mind, an employment for invalids 
and weaklings? I believe if we consider 
a moment, and recall the hold which poetry 
has had on men's minds, the influence it 
has exerted on life, we must conclude it is 
something far more vital and forceful than 
that. Poetry has been a great power in the 

251 



2ft|e J&ottvs of Hffe 

world. If it is not a great power at the 
present time, that does not prove that we 
have outgrown it; it only means that we 
have forgotten it for the moment. We can 
no more outgrow poetry than we can outgrow 
gravitation. The mode of poetry may 
change, as the customs of nations change; 
we do not enjoy the same kind of poetry that 
our ancestors did; our own poetry must be 
native to us, and must express our own 
thoughts and sentiments, rather than those 
of an alien clime and a forgotten age; but 
the natural phenomenon which we call 
poetry will always be present in the world. 
Why? Because poetry is nothing more 
than the form which human speech assumes 
under the stress of clear thinking and lofty 
aspiration, under the terms of beautiful 
utterance. The laws of poetry are not con- 
ventional, but natural. The first poet to 
use any given form of verse is rather a dis- 
coverer than an inventor. Take, for ex- 
ample, the phenomenon of the iambic pen- 

252 



©tie ^tvmuntntt of l&ottvp 

tameter line in English poetry. See how 
universally it is used from Chaucer to Ten- 
nyson; all of Shakespeare, all of the Eliza- 
bethan drama, all of " Paradise Lost," all of 
Pope and Dryden, all of " The Ring and 
the Book," all of the " Idylls of the King," 
indeed, a large portion of our poetic litera- 
ture is done in this measure. Now how shall 
we account for this phenomenon? Shall we 
say that succeeding poets slavishly followed 
their distinguished predecessors in the use 
of the blank verse line? Did they have 
to study to learn the trick? Not at all. They 
used it spontaneously, naturally, uncon- 
scicu'^ly. They never could tell you why. 
And if a poet should be born in England 
to-morrow and reared in entire ignorance of 
English poetry, he would discover blank 
verse for himself. Its recurrence and per- 
sistence in English mean that it is a vital 
form of expression, which springs inevi- 
tably into use, just as a nod of the head 



253 



IS an instinctive motion of assent, and not 
merely a conventional gesture. 

The study of versification, or the outward 
form of poetry, becomes an empirical science. 
We simply collate our facts and deduce our 
laws; for the laws of poetry are truly laws, 
and not rules. There may be rules for 
writing sonnets, but there are no rules for 
writing poetry. The poet is himself always 
acting under laws of expression, which are 
far too complex and universal for him 
wholly to comprehend. He is only a vent 
for expression — a medium through which 
certain powers find play in harmonious 
accordance with their natural laws. When 
he permits himself to rely on intuition, 
when he feels instinctively for the perfect 
phrase, then he attains something like per- 
fection of utterance. When he attempts to 
interfere with inspiration, and to write after 
some plan of his own devising, then he fails. 
When Wordsworth wrote from instinct, at 
the dictate of his genius, he was great. When 

254 



he allowed himself to put in practice certain 
conclusions of his own as to how poetry 
should be written, he became tedious. So, 
too, of Whitman; when he gave free play 
to his genius, he spoke with the tongue of 
a seraph; but when he attempted to imitate 
himself, when he tried to put in practice 
certain notions of his own as to what poetry 
ought to be, he failed. The artist must be a 
student of his own art, it is true; but he must 
never try to practise his art according to rule. 
That is folly. For, as I say, there are no 
rules, but only laws of art. And these laws 
are elemental, psychic, and govern the artist 
himself. He is swayed by them, and it is 
his business to be sensitive to them and 
obey them. Whether he chooses to study 
them, and try to comprehend them or not, 
is a different matter. He may be a scien- 
tist as well as an artist; but in order to be 
the one he does not have to be the other. 
The form of poetry, then, is a phenome- 
non determined by the laws of nature, and 

255 



Zf^t ^ottvs of 3Life 

as such we may very well consider it a per- 
manency. I do not mean that the forms of 
poetry are unchanging. They are not. Just 
because they are living, they will vary con- 
stantly. We shall never be able to predict 
the new forms poetry may take, nor should 
we attempt to impose conventional limits on 
versification. Every new poet will find his 
own new forms, but form of some sort, 
rhythm of some sort, he will have. He can 
no more escape those conditions than spirit 
can escape the influence of all the natural 
forces when it enters the house of clay. 

The subjects of poetry, too, are perma- 
nent as well as its form. The things which 
poetry deals with are the perennial hopes 
and fears of the human heart, the phenomena 
of the inner life. From these poetry has 
made, and will always make, the religions 
of the world. Nor does it disregard the 
facts of science. All science and all philoso- 
phy come within the scope of poetry. It is 
the function of poetry to assimilate the new 

256 



knowledge and make use of the discoveries 
of science. It cannot do this immediately, 
however; it has to wait until these new 
facts become familiar to men's minds, before 
it can treat of them in its own heightened 
and impassioned way. For this reason we 
often hear it said that science and poetry, 
or science and religion, are opposed to each 
other. But that is absurd. The soul cannot 
but love what the mind sees to be true. And 
when that truth is expressed in terms of 
beauty, our senses must be delighted as our 
hearts are encouraged and inspired. 

If all this be so, it does not very well 
appear how we can ever outgrow the need 
of poetry. It would rather seem that we 
shall need it more and more, under the in- 
creasing distractions and complexities of life. 
The more truth we know, the more we shall 
need some means to assimilate it and make it 
effective for our happiness. The more 
wealth we acquire, the more we shall need 
some wise guide to its proper use. An ex- 

257 



©lie mttvs of mu 

pansion of power, without an accompanying 
increase of wisdom, is a mere embarrassment, 
and only makes life more difficult. Poetry in 
its largest sense helps us to make use of our 
knowledge and power in ways that tend 
toward a happier existence, and there can 
hardly be anything more important than 
that, or of more lasting interest to men. 



THE END. 



258 



31^77-1; 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



